Review Worksheet Twist

I decided to give my Algebra 2's one more review day. After some deliberation, I decided to give them a review worksheet - partially because they would have a copy of all the problems I wanted them to practice so they could practice on their own, partially because I didn't feel like trying to put together another review activity for them that they wouldn't put a whole lot of effort into. On the way in to work, I came up with a plan that I hoped would help get questions answered. I think part of this inspiration came from @druinok.

I handed out the worksheet and told the students I would project the answers on the SMARTBoard once I was done giving directions. They were to work on the worksheet problems and check their answers. If they were correct, they were to continue working on problems. If they were wrong, they were to try to figure out what they did wrong and fix it. If they couldn't figure it out, they could check their notes or with the neighbor, or they could find the card with the worked out problem that was posted on my wall:

If they still were stuck and none of the above helped them, then they were to sign up for help:

I had them do this so that when there were several of them who needed help, I could keep track of who I needed to get to. I also told them to ask about one problem at a time so that I could help as many as possible and not have someone monopolize my time.

Did it work? Well, not as well as I would have liked. I did see several students going and checking their work against mine on the wall. I had a couple of students who just went and flat out copied what I had on the wall onto their work paper. I did not have a rush of questions that I had anticipated, which I'm not sure if that's good or bad at the moment. I suspect that it's not good because I don't think they took the work time as seriously as I think they should have.

I do like that the onus was on the students to check their work against something that was correct before asking questions. I was trying to get them to not only work on the problems but to figure out what they did wrong before automatically running to me with questions and this did help the students who took advantage of it. Would I do it again? Maybe not this school year - but I think it was helpful for those students who did the activity in the right spirit.