What happened? You differentiated. You made the whole schedule work around centers and stations and conferencing with each struggling student while trying to enrich the top group and maintain the on level group. You checked off activities, you may have given mid unit tests, exit slips, written anecdotal records, organized for each and every student a massive amount of data. I know I have. I know I will probably continue to feel like I'm putting my kids into a room of hamster wheels and start them spinning through the year, doing activities. Monitoring progress. Finally right before the big test, the evaluation of my whole year and all the teachers who worked just as hard before me to get this group ready for the big test, I will send out a prayer that a miracle will have happened and the questions will be easy enough, familiar enough, that those who struggle will have a chance to show how hard they've worked.
...because it's not all on my planning and monitoring and sweating. It's about students who work hard every day. They try every activity I've ever put before them. They work for hours on mid unit/ end of unit/ pre unit tests, they follow along and work on white boards and raise their hand to ask questions. The students are giving 100%. I'm giving 100%. What's the point??
Last year...I'm looking at one of my students. Math is one of his better subjects but still very difficult and he is sobbing on the carpet. The rest of the class has gone on to practice the skills we've all been working on. I'm available to anyone who wants to stay on the floor and get extra scaffolding. It seems to be a low key, high success oriented environment. Yet, he's sobbing. Loudly, but not dramatically. He won't talk to me and has tucked himself into a ball inside his sweatshirt. I frantically think back to all my comments, all my questions, every thing I can remember from our interaction during the mini-lesson and ask him if I hurt his feelings or if he's worried about something. No, he shakes his head. Finally I ask, "Are you feeling upset with yourself?" Yes, he nods. "Can I help you right now?" I ask. No, he shakes his head and tries to wipe his face. "Do you want to have some time to feel better and go to your group when you are ready?" Yes.
Well, that derailed my carefully thought out Wednesday plans for pulling small groups and conferring and giving extra support to my frequent fliers. My heart is racing. My breath is shaky. I just broke that kid and I'm not sure how or why or how not to do it again.
Later, much later, I realize that moment wasn't in my control. I was just doing what looks so good on paper and he was limping along, looking like he was getting it.
But he wasn't.
We had hit a concept he was so far out of his depth of conceptual understanding and I couldn't close that gap with any amount of scaffolding. His areas of confusion and misunderstanding were complicated and mystical to me, mostly because he'd been limping along in all our intervention activities and pulling out some pretty great thinking during problem solving. But his sense of number was weak. He could do some strategies but couldn't abstract or experiment or think "what if." And so when we got to "what if" and extended patterns, he couldn't do it. And it wasn't a quick fix on my end or a need for more practice on his end that was going to solve this and avoid soul destroying rug time tomorrow.
However, this wasn't anywhere nearly as surprising as the girl who looked like she really 'got' everything. She really 'got' reading and writing and math... except once in a while at the beginning and then more and more as the year went on, she hit a wall. A wall that seemed to come out of nowhere. At least with my other student we worked together often and I knew he had struggles (I just didn't know how deep they were.) This student seemed like a competent mathematician and reader and writer. Then it was report card time and I realized she had been in more of my intervention groups and less independent. She was looking lost in lessons and even with lots of extra practice, she was not moving forward. Finally, in May, I realized I was sending her off to 4th grade and I was just figuring out a major component in her conceptual development -- she had no spatial/ visualization skills. She couldn't hold events from a book in her head to retell. She couldn't visualize cutting a square into two triangles for a math story problem. Her sight words and spelling automaticity had always been sketchy. I had been treating each area with separate practice and intervention when it was all connected.
What's the Point?
I realized what I needed was a continuum, not of skills, but of concepts before skills. Something that was developmental but also went across math disciplines and perhaps even subject areas. Instead of saying a student is a poor speller or a student can't learn math facts, I needed to see that they were working at a level of beginner in symbol imagery--maybe holding symbols like letters and numbers in working memory was the challenge and never made it to long term memory. Or they had great math facts but couldn't retell a story or understand a story problem and maybe they couldn't visualize the images of the situation long enough to recall key details or separate the math from the other parts of the problem. I needed to have the same understanding of how we build and manipulate concepts so I could go back and really intervene and accelerate where the student was.
"Meet them where they are." I have heard that frequently from presenters, but it clashes with "Everyone will learn at the same time and pace and for the same test on the same date" that we have in reality. Without one I can never even get close to the other. So I say What's the Point??? There is no point to throwing activities that look differentiated at students to practice skills but don't meet them where they are. Where they truly are.
So I decided to look at those two students from earlier. What patterns had I seen in them? How did those patterns resonate with my 16 years of teaching and observing students? I have been a reading specialist, a resource room teacher, full inclusion support teacher and lead teacher, classroom teacher, and Title 1 teacher. I have been trying to close literacy and math gaps with all kinds of kids for my whole career and still couldn't tell you exactly where I needed to intervene and reform concepts. I have had professional and personal training. I can give you activities and extra practice. I can give parents things to do at home. But it's bigger than that. Years of misconceptions and stumbling along and maybe even actively hiding their confusion have built a mess behind a wall -- a wall that might be embarrassment or guilt or false security.
This is big. That's my point. It's big and complicated and individual. But I have to believe that I can at least start to meet them where they are. I have to believe I can step back and use my observations and research and other people's research and find a way to stop spinning through the year looking good and giving students hope that this will be the year they magically 'get it.' If I can't improve and grow my pedagogy, then what's the point?
And so (see below), I have started a continuum for key concept areas (based on things I've read, professional development, and my own observations.) It's only my first thinking, but I plan to use that continuum in math this year. I'm not saying we won't use activities and centers and stations. I am saying I will be deliberate and I will make sure that every activity is as specific to the need of the learner as I can make it. I will do everything I can to keep my eye on the continuum and not on the next cute activity tub that matches my curriculum, but not my students' reality. I will still spin a bit in our hamster wheels as I juggle this with classroom management and all the other subjects and lessons toward growing up in our crazy world and financing school supplies and snacks, etc. But this is my priority: I will know where students are. I will know why they are there and I will not simply do activities for the sake of anyone else but my students.
Novice
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Apprentice
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Practitioner
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Expert
|
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Prerequisites
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No
basic understanding of concept
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Basic
understanding- needs deeper level
|
Grade
level understanding (3rd)
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Needs
topic extended
|
|
Number
Memory
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Compose/ decompose 0-5/0-10
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Compose/ decompose 10-20
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Compose/ decompose 20-100
All operations
efficiently
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Compose/ decompose 100-1000
+
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Extend
Patterns given rules
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Spatial/
Visual
|
Basic shapes memory
|
Compose/ compare
shapes
< > =visual
measure
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Compare/ create
Fractions from shapes
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Fraction compose/
decompose
|
Scale / resizing when x or dividing (whole or
fraction)
|
Place
Value
|
1:1 Model with
circles/ concrete bundles of 10, 100
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Model with drawing/
abstract manip (base ten blocks)
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Represent/ manipulate
with abstract manip/ drawings
Approximate
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Represent/
manipulate with symbols
approximate
|
Decimal/ powers of
10
|
Geometry
|
Basic attributes/
vocabulary
Tactile
|
Common sort
categories/ vocabulary
|
If… then...
categories
(Quadrilateral)
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Decompose shapes
into properties/ vocabulary
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If… then… so…
theorems
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Situational
/ Problem Solving
|
Concrete
Manipulatives represent familiar situation
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One familiar
sequence visualize – choose strategy and concrete representation
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Multiple familiar
sequences visualize –abstract representation
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Determine importance
in familiar sequences and interpret results
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Apply all above
concepts in real world situations, not always familiar
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Created
by Sarah Linington 2015
