First, give the students five minutes at the beginning of the class period to free write as a way of helping them settle down to get ready for the lesson. Most students have a break between classes and often rush to make it to class on time. The five minutes provides the time they need to get themselves together.
About half way through the class, students begin to show signs of minds wandering so they are not paying attention to the lesson. A simple way to counter this is to have students answer a multiple choice question by going to a corner of the room that represents their choice. This bit of movement helps them refocus while adding in a bit of movement.
Another way to help students is to help them build their confidence in regard to doing math. Unfortunately, many students arrive in high school convinced they are missing the “Math gene” or just aren’t good at it. One way to counter this is to praise the effort they put into doing the problem. It is important not to talk about how smart they are because that reinforces the idea of math can only be done by a certain type of student. Take time to recognize their effort to reinforce the idea that one learns math by working hard.
Other ways to help students improve their math confidence is to listen carefully to them when they explain how they completed a problem. One should use this as a way of assessing their understanding in an informal way but it also shows students you value what they have to say. The last thing is to use open ended questions which allow for more than one “correct” answer.
In addition, it is important to encourage students to ask for clarification if they don’t understand something. It is possible to determine misunderstandings the student has when they explain how they completed a problem but they also need to learn that it is ok to ask questions when they don’t understand.
Furthermore, one needs to emphasize conceptual understanding over procedure because one can do the procedure without understanding the concept being taught. Sometimes teachers focus too much on how to solve a problem step by step rather than making sure they associate the concept with the process.
One should also try to find problems that are authentic but peak student interest at the same time because these types of problems are more likely to engage them so they want to solve them. Using real world problems tends to increase student understanding and interest. Ask a question that requires them to decide which size is better for the money is more likely to get them interested instead of doing a straightforward cost per unit problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment