Rebecca Henrie Nine Way to Help Floundering Students

Rebecca Henrie Literature Review

Title:               Nine Ways – How do we help floundering students who lack basic math concepts?

Author:           Marilyn Burns

Source:          http://www.mathsolutions.com/documents/2007_Nine_Ways.pdf

Summary:       Marilyn Burns explains how we can make our math interventions successful for our struggling math learners.

3 Issues that are essential to teaching mathematics:

·         Help students make connections among mathematical ideas so they do not see these ideas as disconnected facts.

·         Build students’ new understandings on the foundation of their prior learning.

·         Remember that students’ correct answers, without accompanying explanations of how they reason, are not sufficient for judging mathematical understanding.

9 Strategies to be essential to successful intervention instruction for struggling math learners:

1.      Determine and Scaffold the Essential Mathematics Content

This is like peeling an onion – we must identify those concepts and skills we want students to learn and discard what is not pertinent.

2.      Pace Lessons Carefully

Students who struggle typically need more time to grapple with new ideas & practice new skills in order to internalize them.  Some of them need to unlearn before they relearn.

3.      Build a Routine of Support - 4 Stage Support Routine: 1. Teacher models & thinks aloud 2. Teacher models & elicits responses from students 3. Students think on their own & then work in pairs 4. Students work independently while referring to work recorded on the board if needed.

4.      Foster Student Interaction

We know something best once we’ve taught it.  Giving students opportunities to voice their ideas & explain them to others helps extend and cement their learning.  Make student interaction an integral part of instruction (think-pair-share or turn & talk)

5.      Make Connections Explicit

Students who need intervention instruction typically fail to look for relationships or make connections among mathematical ideas on their own.  They need help building new learning on what they already know (multiplication is just repeated addition).

6.      Encourage Mental Calculations

Calculating mentally builds students’ ability to reason and fosters their number sense.  When students calculate mentally, they can estimate before they solve problems so that they can judge whether the answer they arrive at makes sense (18 x 10 should not need a pencil to solve!).

7.      Help Students Use Written Calculations to Track Thinking

Students need to see paper & pencil as a tool for keeping track of how they think.

Mentally – 700 x 4       Paper & Pencil – 683 x 4

8.      Provide Practice

Struggling math students typically need a great deal of practice.  That practice should be DIRECTLY connected to students’ immediate learning experiences.  Use the 4 Stage Support Routine, allowing for a gradual release to independent work.

9.      Build in Vocabulary Instruction

Many students needing math intervention have weak mathematical vocabularies.  We should explicitly teach vocabulary in the context of a learning activity & then use it consistently (Math Vocabulary Chart).

Analysis - This article has changed the way I teach my math interventions.  I am much more intentional about creating and teaching lessons that help intervention students catch up and keep up.  I use Marilyn’s 4 Stage Support Routine while teaching my math instruction and it has been working very well for us!  This article also discussed the when is the right time to offer interventions (before, at the same time, or after the class has studied the topic).