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There are a few different ways to can
go with this, but the most important thing is to create balanced
tribes. You want each tribe to be a combination of strong
and weak students... The strong students will learn the
skill of teaching others and the weak students will learn how to
be stronger students. As I
mentioned earlier, you may want to have tribes be just guys and
just girls. It keeps the flirting down, it keeps the girls
from being dominated by the boys. The myth that girls
can't do math is due to one reason: BOYS! Right
around the fourth grade, girls start to notice boys... and, for
some strange reason, they think boys won't like them if they are
smarter than they are... So, they start to dumb-down.
Math and science are the first things to go and this often
sticks for the rest of their lives. Let's break that cycle
now and let the girls know that they can be just as good in
math, if not BETTER!
A suggestion for tribe formation:
1) Go by their grades from their
last math class. Make yourself a little deck of cards --
each card with a student's name... Put all "A" students
together, "B" students together and so on. Decide how many
tribes you want with how many members (4-6 members is good).
Then, deal the cards out like this:
You may want to have them
fill out an info sheet (especially if you teach at the college
level) to get this and other info. I always ask them
questions about how strong their study skills are, how excited
are they about being in college and how strong of a math student
they perceive themselves to be.
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