Reaching Struggling Learners
Reaching Struggling Learners
#80: Cracking the Code: Strategies for Effective Math Intervention and Progress Monitoring
Ever feel like you're playing detective when it comes to monitoring math progress? Well, grab your magnifying glass because on today's episode, I, Jessica Curtis, am your guide to unraveling the mystery of effective math intervention. With a spotlight on choosing students with aligned needs and deciphering assessment data, we lay out an actionable plan to reinforce those foundational math skills that are so often the culprits of confusion. And let's not forget the significance of prerequisite skills – we ensure these are locked in place, setting up our students for a smoother climb up the math mountain.
As we navigate the twists and turns of math education, you'll discover how a splash of color and the vroom of miniature cars can transform a daunting concept into an 'aha!' moment. Sharing my personal toolkit of creative strategies, I invite you to join me in thinking outside the traditional teaching box. Stay tuned for a sneak peek at our next episode where I'll stir the pot with some controversial math opinions. Until then, may your coffee be strong and your breaks be restorative. Let's toast to a year where math struggles meet their match!
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5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring
So for the last several weeks we've talked about math and we've talked about how we need to get the kids working on and mastering those foundational skills before we move on. And the fact is, if you teach math at any grade level, at this point you can probably list a bunch of kids that need math interventions. Right, you could easily choose four or five of them to work with to remediate. I'm not saying you could easily have the time and the resources and all that, but you could easily choose four or five students that need math remediation. I guess the next step for us to talk about is how do we figure out what to focus on in progress, monitor what's the most important thing, and that's what we're going to talk about 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:So, just like with everything else, with progress monitoring, we have to have a starting point. We have to figure out where are we now and where do we want to go, or where do we think we can go really in the next little bit. Math for some reason seems more complicated. The road to being successful in math just in some ways seems more complicated. It seems like there's so many more avenues that are branches. However you want to look at that metaphor, analogy, whatever, it just seems more convoluted with reading or than reading. With reading you think about okay, the student can't read, we have to do phonics. Okay, if they can't do phonics, we got to do phonemic awareness. If they can do phonics, all right, we got to work on some fluency. It just seems like it step by step by step, it seems like an easier progression. With math, for some reason, we make it much more complicated. We think, okay, number, number sense, place value, that's related to number sense, you got to have that build on it. But then addition and subtraction seem like offshoots. Even though they're related, they're not the same exact building structure. Subtraction definitely builds from addition, multiplication, yeah. But then you got decimals. Decimals are kind of weird, they're more like place value, and you got time and you have money and you have all these other pieces. Oh, and then geometry Don't even get us started on. How does geometry fit in? All that? For some reason and it has happened in many, many different meetings when we start talking about math, we start talking about math, all the different things, and it's hard to get a group of teachers, a group of adults, whatever, to agree that, hey, this is the next step that needs to be taken for this student to be able to be successful in math. And so that's why I really wanted to talk today about what are the steps that you can take to figure out exactly what you want to progress, or what you need to progress, monitor for your student and what priorities to set. So, again, you know I love my steps.
Speaker 1:So step one is we have to determine the kids and the group of kids with similar needs and similar learning styles. Why do I say that? Because, again, this kind of stuff is just kind of inherent. It's easy to do with reading because we do it so often with reading. With math, we have to put in more thinking time into our preparation before we can do our interventions. And all that Because, again, it's not all set up for us like it is for reading. It's not as comfortable.
Speaker 1:So, first of all, we got to figure out what are our kids, the groups, what are, what are their similar needs and what are their learning styles. The second step is we need to review the assessments, the screeners, all that information to figure out the most basic skills that we've got to work on. Why did I say kids first and then the, the screeners and all that? Second, because the fact is we are so much more limited on our time and our our resources for math. We have to be, we have to pool our resources a lot more with math and the fact is you're probably not going to be able to have as many math groups as you do your reading groups, just because the priorities we've talked about that in previous episodes. So we have to kind of figure out what's our group dynamic going to look like and then figure out, okay, they have similar needs, but we're going to have to really pinpoint all of those, the needs of these students, so we can work on it. That's our for our step two.
Speaker 1:For step three, we need to figure out an additional screener or quiz or work sample, whatever to check on prerequisite skills. So when we figure out, hey, I think that our student needs to work in this skill set, whatever it is take some time and really think hard what were the prerequisite skills that that student needed to be able to master, needed to be able to do, to do this and figure out a way to quiz that, to check and see is that student honestly solid in the prerequisite skills? Whether it's number sense, whether it's place value, whether it's addition fluency, subtraction fluency, identifying shapes, whatever it is, does the student have the prerequisite skills and knowledge to be able to move on? And work samples, whatever are really easy ways to quickly figure out if that student is strong in those other skill areas and we got to check on that. If they're solid on it, wonderful, we have just pinpointed the foundational skill that we need to focus on. If not, well, we got some more digging to do so. Once you have figured out the most basic, the fundamental skill that you know, you know where you need to start. That's where you make your simple goal. Now I talked about it a couple of weeks ago Don't go for word problems.
Speaker 1:Just say no to word problems. That should be. I need to get a shirt with that. Just say no to word problems. I'm doing it, but that's what we need to do. We need to make a simple goal. The student will be able to correctly answer 20 addition problems in a minute. Whatever your goal is going to be, figure that out and the next step, step five, ignore the current math topic. Ignore it. Ignore it is so hard. It is so hard. I don't know why. It's not hard in reading, it is so hard in math. We always want our kids to get better grades immediately. We want them to feel better on all that immediately. Guys, trust the process. Better fact fluency will improve word problems. It will. Better fact fluency or better number sense are going to improve. Adding or subtracting or multiplying or dividing, decimals or fractions or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Having the basic skills will impact, whatever the topic is that they're working on in class right now, but they're not ready for the topic that they're doing right now. We have to fill in those gaps. We have to, and we can't stop time. It's horrible, but it's reality. We can't stop time in the large classroom Because the fact is we have certain rules. There are standards that we have to teach and we cannot stop and not teach these other, more advanced skills because this group of five isn't ready for it yet. It's the sad, hard truth of education. You're a teacher, you know this and it's horrible. It is horrible, but we can't stop time.
Speaker 1:The class is going to move on to other topics. The best thing we can do is support them in the most foundational skills so that those new topics are a little bit easier and a little bit easier. That's how we help them. So we're going to ignore that current math skill, whatever it is. Now, if what we're doing directly relates, if we're working on adding, adding with regrouping, and they're doing adding decimals with regrouping wonderful, that's a beautiful thing. And how in the world did it? That's really close. I don't know that you would be. I honestly don't know that you would be remediating that if they're that close in skills. But if they are wonderful, that is amazing. They can now practice that. But chances are that's not what's going to happen. Chances are the skill that we're remediating is pretty, pretty far removed. It's probably very foundational compared to what's going on in their, in the math class, the large math class. But we have to trust the process. We have to trust that we, what we know, that math builds, and by helping them here, by teaching them these skills, these low level, easier skills, foundational skills, that we are boosting them on. The more advanced skills We'll get there, but we have to have, we have to take the time to do to get there.
Speaker 1:And finally, number six you have to choose how you're going to reteach that skill. Are you going to use visuals? Are there multi-sensory ways to do it? How are you going to practice? And again, just doing drills is not how you practice, how you, how you reteach it. Just setting a, a skill sheet down is not how you, how you reteach it. You have to actually intervene, you have to reteach it. We have to show them, not necessarily a different way to do it, but show them in a different way how they did it.
Speaker 1:For students with, for example, attention struggles, maybe using, you know, circles and dots on a paper isn't good enough. Maybe, maybe we need to use cars. I'll tell you what those little mini cars. They were from the Cars Movie, but they were a little tiny, I don't know, maybe an inch wide, high, whatever, but those things were phenomenal for teaching my six year old at the time.
Speaker 1:Addition and subtraction Because, let me tell you, attention, with a six year old, is a thing that doesn't exist. And so I had those little cars out and we could zoom them up and we could have a parking lot of those cars, and then you add a couple more. Oh, that's what addition is? You're putting them together and then, oh no, subtractions were taken them apart, they're driving away. Let me tell you, that was the breakthrough. It wasn't my amazing teaching, it was the stinking cars. But finally he figured out it just clicked in his little brain that adding means all the cars go together, subjecting means these little cars go away.
Speaker 1:I went through. I used popcorn kernels, I have used the little circle, you know the yellow and the red dot thingamajiggers, I tried dice, I tried drawing things. I did lollipops. That was a horrible idea, because then you just wanted to eat the lollipops. I finally just was that the cars were available. They were in the corner over there. I picked them up and we did them, and that was when it clicked.
Speaker 1:You never know what silly thing is going to make it click, but you think about different ways. Is a kid tactile? Are they? Are they? Do they have to move? Oh, my goodness, do they have to move? Then let's figure out a way to get the movement in there. That's how you get the interventions going. The kids are used to sitting in the chairs. They're used to sitting in their desks. They're used to doing worksheets.
Speaker 1:What are other ways that we can reteach this concept? Not showing them how to 100 different ways to do this concept. We don't want to confuse them and show them 20 different ways or five different ways to do this one type of problem. No, we want to show them one way to do it, but use five different ways on in how, how, how they can do it that way. We're going to use, we're gonna and it does.
Speaker 1:It takes some stress, stretching of our own minds to figure out how can I show this, how to do this process? They're gonna do the process the exact same way, but how can I show it to them differently? And it hurts your brain, it does. That's off to math teachers Like you are some of the. They get a bad rap, I know, because sometimes it doesn't appear that they're very creative. Their classrooms do tend to be a little bit more. I mean they're, they're geometric and all that. But let me tell you they are some of the most creative people in the world because they are figuring out a hundred different ways to show the way to do something, and hats off to them every single time.
Speaker 1:But we've got to figure out how are we going to reteach it, how are we going to provide an intervention for these kids? And the next step is, with all that is to get started, jump in and if the little yellow and red dot card dot counter thingamajiggers don't work, seriously try the little cars, try, try, uh, try big cars, try, I don't know Barbie shoes. I mean, goodness knows, I had a billion of those. Find something, anything, and you never know what might click for that student. Anyway, yes, math is a complicated concept. We're going to talk more about math, but it's not going to be next week. Next week I'm going to say some things that are going to get me in trouble, so you're going to want to tune in for that while I get myself in trouble. And then, yeah, I'm going to get myself into a world trouble. But you know what, I'm here for it. Until next time, may your coffee be strong, your break absolutely fantastic and amazing, and your new years beautiful, beautiful.
Speaker 2:Bye.