Collaboration in Middle School mathematics

It is so vitally important for students to work together on collaborative projects. Through collaboration using manipulatives, students can literally see how their peers are thinking through their iterative processes, they learn to articulate their own thinking, and they learn to value the input and opinions of others. Also, in being able to see the practical value of mathematics in building, budgeting, and resource allocation, students appreciate 'real world' scenarios in the discipline.

In this image, student groups build helicopters on a budget. Educators can set the complexity of the task by altering the values of the inputs (value of different color rods and connectors).