comment to Shellee

My regular classes are 3 hour blocks and I too struggle with management. It seems that I usually plan too much for the students to work on, however, this does seem to limit the time they have to spend on talking and misbehavior. I usually start them with a writing task, then some type of computer assignment, then lecture and demonstration. If they have labs, on these days, they would return demonstrations and then work under the direction of team leaders with me supervising all groups. If this is not a lab day, I give them complex scenarios to work out as a small group or cooperative group. I still use the team leaders to facilitate their groups and again continue to monitor all groups. I used cooperative groups for the first time this week and it did work well. Again they did not quite finish the product but they did not have time for idle talk.