Reaching Struggling Learners
Reaching Struggling Learners
#78: Rethinking Math Goals and Maximizing Progress Monitoring in IEPs
Ever found yourself tangled in the complexities of math goals within IEPs, particularly those pesky word problems? You're in for a revelation as we tackle the misconceptions and unveil a more strategic approach. Word problems have been the go-to for encompassing multiple skills, but as I've experienced firsthand, this method isn't the golden ticket we thought it was. Through an eye-opening discussion, learn how I pivoted from using word problems as catch-all goals to focusing on specific foundational skills, leading to crystal-clear objectives and remarkable student progress. We'll dissect the essence of crafting math goals that truly cater to the needs of struggling learners and leave those overly broad targets behind.
Hold onto your calculators, because this episode is also your gateway to mastering progress monitoring in math. I'm thrilled to share a math progress monitoring bundle that's been a game-changer in my teaching arsenal, and you won't want to miss the free guide I've put together. It's a succinct five-step walkthrough to kickstart your progress monitoring journey with confidence, tailored to fit even the most jam-packed academic schedules. Discover how to harness the power of focused, strategic intervention, and give your students the boost they need to excel in math, all without the overwhelm. Join us for this enlightening conversation and equip yourself with the tools to make measurable strides in your students' math abilities.
Subscribe & Review in iTunes
Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don’t want you to miss an episode. I’m adding a bunch of bonus episodes to the mix and if you’re not subscribed there’s a good chance you’ll miss out on those. Click here for iTunes.
Now if you’re feeling extra loving, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes, too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast and they’re also fun for me to go in and read. Click here to leave a review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is. Thank you!
Links Mentioned in the Show:
https://teachingstrugglinglearners.com
5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring
Many times when we talk about math progress monitoring goals, we tend to default to using word problems as our main goal. The thought is that it's going to allow for practice, right in the target skill, other skills and word problems which, let's face it, there are. I mean most students. If they're struggling in math, they are struggling in word problems, right? So it sounds great. We'll make our goal be for word problems and all these other goals. You know, all these other skills, we will practice that. When we practice our word problems, we're hitting, you know, 20 birds with one stone. That sounds, that's absolutely. It sounds great, right. Is that actually the best way to go? Let's talk about that today.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling Learners. I'm a boy-mom and a veteran teacher. You're listening to the Reaching Struggling Learners podcast, where we talk all about helping students succeed academically, socially and behaviorally. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1:All right. So hands up and I would absolutely be putting my hands up not that long ago. Hands up if you feel personally attacked when I said maybe word problems for math aren't the way to go. Yeah, just about all of us put word problems in for our goals, don't we? That's, I mean, probably the single most common IEP goal that I have seen and I have read a lot of IEPs, and under that goal are so many other different skills, right? So if you, if you're feeling personally attacked because I'm kind of coming at word problems as math goals, you're not alone and, believe me, it's not a personal attack, it is a hey, we need, we really need to start thinking a little bit more, because when we're putting our word problems in there as our goals, as our main goal, we're actually making more work for ourselves. So, yeah, let's talk about that.
Speaker 1:So if you, if you listen to the podcast last week, you know we discussed the MTSS progress monitoring IEPs. Take your pick. They are generally focused on reading, that's, that's the big focus, right? But we know that there are a lot of kids struggling with math. So, again, check out last week's episode for steps that you can take to help your students who are struggling in math, and of course, we're going to talk more about that in the coming weeks, but you can always check out last week's episode, for you know step by steps on how to do that. So this week I want to talk about the fact that, you know, since a big part of progress monitoring is setting high quality goals, I thought that before we got into too in depth in this topic, we should really talk about this before we get into the intervention system as a whole. So if you've followed me for any length of time, you know I am borderline hyper focused. Okay, I'll admit it, I'm not borderline, I am. I am hyper focused on making sure that the most foundational skill deficit is identified, and that's where we progress monitor. You're probably sick of hearing me talk about the most basic skill deficit, but I am. That is, that is, that's my, that's my Roman empire, that is, that is where I'm at. So there we are. Yeah, you know how focused, hyper focused, because Absolutely obsessed with finding the most basic skill deficit and making our goals on that, right right on that.
Speaker 1:So it may surprise you to know that I used to write word problem goals for kids that were struggling with addition fluency, multiplication, fluency oh goodness, adding decimals, all sorts of things. That was my go-to. That was that. That was how I wrote a lot of my math goals and the reason was just like what I talked about in the intro Earlier. It just makes sense You're gonna work on word problems, which you know are difficult, but then you get to work on these other things too, and it's just this beautiful umbrella and it just wraps it up and it looks so pretty and wonderful, and that that was the way I did it Course. Then, when it came time to me actually collecting my data, it meant that I was trying to progress, monitor so many different things and the focus of my intervention time it was cloudy.
Speaker 1:I Because I was okay. I have to make sure that my students are working on word problems and that's vocabulary stuff that they have to do. But part of that vocabulary is Understanding how to write the number sentence correctly based on those words. But then, oh, my goodness, they don't even know how to add fluently and multiply fluently or subtract, or goodness, oh, divide, oh, oh. That makes me night, that makes my head hurt. They can't do those things. So then, even if they wrote the problem correctly. They couldn't do the problem correctly and so my entire goal was just like so.
Speaker 1:So the results I couldn't work on fixing, on helping them learn how to do word problems, solve word problems, because the prerequisite skills weren't done. And I was just Beside myself because my goal, my end goal, was that they would be able to, you know, solve 80% of the word problems correctly or whatever it was. There was no way that my students were ever going to meet that goal because they didn't have the prerequisites goal, the prerequisite skills to meet that goal, and so my results were Cloudy. The information that I was trying to provide was cloudy. My results were At the end of the day, my results was my students made less progress and that hurts my heart that I have to say that, but that's the reality. Because my goal was so beautiful and wrapped up in such a beautiful umbrella of things, I Couldn't focus my time and my students didn't get the benefit of focused intervention time.
Speaker 1:The fact is, it feels right, it feels good to go with the word problems and you're hitting multiple birds with one stone and all that stuff, but it bites us, it really bite, and it bites you hard when you're you're actually there and you're having to explain. Well, yeah, I mean, you know we really still need there's still working on word problems. We've been working on word problems for four years. Well, we're still working on them Because we can't make progress, because the goal isn't what it should be. So, being focused on the most foundational skill, it means that the supports and the instruction is focused on one thing Allowing the kids to make more progress Much more quickly. And that's when you see the increase in confidence, we see the increase in motivation, we see the increase in Participation, all the shuns. It's beautiful because they get to see progress, they get to feel like they're doing better. We're not just beating our heads against the same brick wall every single session, because we're actually working on the part of their skill deficit, that they're ready to make progress on Some more focus goals.
Speaker 1:Some some examples right, because it's it's it's painful, it is. It's painful to step away for a step away, step away from the word problem goal. But some examples could be correctly complete 20 addition problems in one minute, okay. Or identify place value to 10,000. Given a number, add two digit numbers with regrouping, with 90% accuracy, 100% accuracy. However you want to do it, all those types of things that are Much more focused in that. Don't that aren't a beautiful umbrella, that all of those things?
Speaker 1:When we hyper focus in on the most foundational skill deficit, that's when our students are going to make leaps and bounds of progress, progress. So you, if you are looking for progress monitoring materials to help with math, I do have a math progress monitoring growing bundle. I'll put it in the show notes for you. But the fact is, whether you want that or not, if you're getting ready to get into progress monitoring, I want to highly encourage you to check out my five steps to start progress monitoring. It is free. I'll put the link in the show notes but it is absolutely a. It's the first step. It is the way that you get into progress monitoring confidently and comfortably. It's got everything that you need to jump in and feel confident in your own abilities to do that. In the meantime, I hope that you are having a wonderful week and may your coffee be strong, your students calm and your administrators forgiving, because this time of year is absolutely crazy.
Speaker 2:Bye.