Teach 180: The Partner Quiz (Day 154)

In Calculus on Friday, students took their last quiz.  For many of them, it was the last math assessment of their high school career.  The quiz involved integration by using substitution and integration by parts.  These two topics had been taught over the past two weeks.  However, many students were out for a day or two due to field trips, illness and college visits.  Most students could be successful at solving integrals involving substitution or integration by parts, but I felt that they would be more confident, if they worked with a partner.  There are many steps in solving these problems and the students seemed to like the idea of working with someone to catch the small mistakes that often happen when doing a very involved math problem.


However, the quiz went even better than I had hoped for.  Although everyone was asking to be paired with the student they thought had the highest grade in the class, each student seemed pleased with the partner I had assigned.  The room was filled with true collaboration and discussion for almost a full forty minutes.  Students wanted to do well, because they didn't want to let their partner down.  I believe that they spent more care and time checking their work than they normally do when being assessed individually.  Individual assessment is important, but this quiz was not about to make or break anyone's grade for the course.  Students knew this, but worked to do their best.  Each pair was able to do all the problems, no problems were left blank, and students were eager to check their answers against the answer key after the quiz.  The grades for all pairs were in the A range and any errors were more related to Algebra than Calculus.  The partner quiz was a "win" in my book and something I plan to do again in the future.