group work

I have noticed that when I have the students in my class work in group or with partners and I tell them that it is a quiz or test, you cannot stop them from asking questions. When we are in class going over the same things as a homework assignment, only a few of the students are asking questions. Maybe I need to have them turn in one homework assignment that would be counted as a quiz. I still think that we are covering too broad a range of topics in all of our math classes and we really need to find out what the essential learning are for math and really develop some real life learning from those lessons. There is too much going on and there never seems to be an end goal of purpose in mind for math for these students. Too many of them believe that they are never going to use math again in their lives and since teenagers know all, you are unable to convince them of anything else.