Students need to be teachers.

I’m of the strong opinion that nobody has mastered an idea that they can’t explain and communicate to others. It’s important to give students the opportunity to take on the role of a teacher. For this reason I’m a big fan of group work and interactions. I want to see students discussing ideas and explaining concepts to each other.

In this post I am sharing some ideas for more formal assignments or projects that take students out of their comfort zone and place them on the other side of the desk. These assignments can be used for students at all levels, though they seem particularly well suited to strong students. Possible uses include

• projects
• exam replacements
• study guides
• notes to use on the actual exam
• extra credit

I have listed four teaching assignments below. You can use them as a starting point for your own assignment or simply duplicate them exactly. Feel free to try them out, and please let me know how it goes.

Texting Lesson

One of my most popular teaching assignments has been to require students to stage a tutoring session via text-message. Students have no trouble coming up with fun dialog. They have to think out the problem from the perspective of the tutor and the tutee. I have been impressed with what my students have come up with.

(This particular page is from a calculus book that I started writing. I don’t know if it will ever be completed. I keep vacillating between thinking that the idea of Text Message Calculus is brilliant and thinking that nobody would ever read it.)

You can access the code for the project here. You will need to clone the project to be able to edit it.

Pocketmod Summary

A pocketmod is a little booklet made out of a single page that has been cut and folded.

Teachers can use a pocketmod to create review sheets or worksheets. Students can create their own pocketmod study guides. Imagine the effort students would pour into creating one of these if they were allowed to use their notes on the exam.

The sample below is a pocketmod worksheet that my wife uses to accompany one of her Science Mom videos.

Below is a review sheet I made as a sample for my students to show them how to create a pocketmod.

Pocketmods can be handwritten. More advanced students can type them up. Feel free to clone the project here to take advantage of an existing template.

Topic Resume

Resumes are a standard way to introduce and get a quick feel for a person. This assignment requires students to create a resume for an idea or a course. It takes a great deal of thought and care to craft a good resume. The added challenge of personifying a subject is guaranteed to stretch students. The example below is a sample resume I created for the topic inverse functions.

I have never actually used this assignment; I just haven’t found the right opportunity. However, I think it could make a good final project. You can clone the project here to use the same template.

Create a Desmos Lesson

In many of my courses I require students to create a lesson using Desmos. They create an account at teacher.desmos.com and make their own lesson. By this point in the course they have been exposed to many Desmos activities, so they can identify what makes a strong and exciting lesson and what does not. Overall I have been a little disappointed with the quality of the lessons, but students seem to perform well on the topics they choose to teach.

Below you can see my instruction page for this assignment in my calculus class.