My students have so many troubles while moving from the informal to the formal, especially because they’ve been erroneously taught to start with the formal.

(1) Feedback like, “You have 3 incorrect matches” is intentionally very limited so it doesn’t give too much away. It’ll prompt a bit of whining for more specific hints. So I’ll have to extricate myself from the conversation without caving to student requests for more help than I want to give. Rather than saying no, it’s simpler to engineer the situation so the request doesn’t arise. In addition, when feedback is so intentionally limited, I don’t see how delivering it personally or verbally will help. Personal, verbal feedback is only helpful for longer, more discursive teacher replies. I’m not ready yet to give that kind of help until the kids have had at least a few minutes to think about the little hint. What I’d really like is the option to let Desmos tell the group how many matches were wrong, and simultaneously to have Desmos start a little countdown clock next to the group names in my dashboard so that if they haven’t corrected their mistake in 5 minutes, I get prompted to go intervene in person.

(2) If I choose C, I’ll want to eavesdrop on the conversation between the groups so I know if one group just tells the other group the answers. To do that, I can’t be talking to any other groups at that time.

(3) I’m imagining a room with 28 kids. Once I launch your activity, I’ll want to sit with the English Language Learners and check their understanding of the instructions and hold their hands through the first part. I may also have 1-2 students who really need me to be their group partners because students with special needs sometimes struggle with group work. This can be the case for students with autism, students with emotional disabilities, or for students who have been absent for the last 3 weeks (e.g., grandma got sick back in Guatemala, so the whole family went down there to be supportive). Sometimes I have a co-teacher to help with needs like these, and sometimes I don’t. Even when I do, it’s really hard to support the students who are struggling while simultaneously giving good feedback to my top 50%. There are days when almost all of my energy is going to struggling students. On days like this, anything you can do to help me serve the top students better is a god-send.

Could it be that the issue is about the metaphors we use? The sort of feedback Desmos currently gives presents itself to the student using the metaphor of “Desmos as an environment.” The sort of feedback Desmos is reluctant to give the student would employ the metaphor “Desmos as a teacher.”

Can students juggle both metaphors at once?

If so, this sounds really cool.