Sheep in the Classroom

In Stats today, I only had about 25 minutes worth of new material, and then I handed out a review sheet and told them to work on in in groups, ask questions, and finish it before Thursday. They are used to working in groups, but usually it's on a fairly short worksheet, which they are going to hand in at the end of the hour. So this was a familiar situation, but not quite what we usually do.

In the first class, two guys figured out pretty quickly that I wasn't going to do anything interesting, so after maybe 10 minutes they got up and left. I wasn't going to throw myself in front of the exit, so I just said, "See you on Thursday." A few minutes later, someone else figured out that he wasn't going to get in trouble, and he left. And then a few more, and then a few more. It's an hour and twenty minute class, but by about 55 minutes we were down to three groups, merrily working away. They all stayed almost the entire time, and kept working together and asking questions.

In the second class, no one figure out that they could leave. One guy fell asleep, a few groups got pretty far off task, but no one left. Finally, about 15 minutes before class was going to end, the one guy woke up and hinted that boy, he'd worked hard enough for the day. So I told him he could go, and he did. Within five minutes, everyone was gone.

I don't know what this proves, other than students are funny critters.

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