For whatever reason, in the years that followed, I have never used the structure. Last week was our annual week of mission trips and life skills classes. That meant returning to eight days of classes this week and next before Spring Break. Our factoring test will happen right before we leave, so I needed something to fill these few days with practice since we did all of our learning before the week of trips.
Enter: speed dating. I pulled together an assortment of factoring problems (GCF, grouping, trinomials, special cases) and wrote each on a quarter sheet of paper. We set the tables in parallel rows and had the students on the interior rotate each round. By my third class, I added in conversational aspects where they greeted their partners and asked them a random question. We are a small school where most of our students know one another, but I was so pleased when these questions helped create relationships between my students who talk a lot and my students who rarely engage with anyone else. They spent ten seconds sharing something about their life (favorite color, plans for spring break, which trip they went on last week), and it promoted really positive conversation. I don't often work on that relationship building because our general school culture provides so much time for it outside of class, but experience made me want to do more.
With regard to the activity itself, the ownership students took over their learning was huge. I had students telling me that they felt like they really understood factoring! They were so proud of themselves. By the end, they were standing up next to each other showing each other how it worked whenever their partner was stuck. For as much as I've harped on them helping each other, with this structure, they really did it!
