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As an elementary school student, I attended a Montessori school and I remember playing with math manipulatives and talking about math. I had no idea if I was behind developmentally or not and I never thought about it either. When I began attending public school in third grade, I immediately knew my math skills were weak. A large poster on the wall showed the names of all the students in the class with stars next to each math skill that had been mastered. Each day, we would get purple mimeographed sheets with basic addition, subtraction, or multiplication problems on them. Our teacher diligently timed us and if you were able to finish in the allotted amount of time then you received a shiny star next to your name. I never did it fast enough and at the end of the year, I think I still had no stars; that’s what I remember anyway. Math plagued me all the way through high school. I failed algebra 1 in 8th grade and retook it. Then in high school, I failed algebra 2 and retook it. I passed geometry but it wasn’t by much. I avoided math fairly easily in college but my feelings about math remained the same.
Twelve years ago, I accepted a high school special education position. Our school is inclusive and so many of the services I deliver are in the regular classroom. One of the classes I was required to support was algebra 2. I didn’t hate it. In fact, I began to enjoy math and I wasn’t horrible at it either. I kind of got it and could even explain it to students. Sometimes, I was able to identify their misunderstandings better than the instructor. I am now working toward my secondary math certification but I have become very interested in the impact that students’ feelings about math have on their achievement and ways in which we can improve students’ math self-esteem so to speak.
It is common sense that if you feel terrible or don’t like something, it is harder to get motivated to do it. If you exercise every day in an attempt to lose weight and you don’t lose weight then you become less motivated to exercise. Many of us have experienced this and other examples of this in our own lives. So what if we focused on improving students’ math self-image so to speak? Teachers can create situations and opportunities that are specifically designed to engage the learner that might not normally participate; to make the student who usually doesn’t do well in math, look like they are the expert.
Using groups effectively is one way to do this. I say using groups effectively because just using groups isn’t enough. Choose your groups wisely. Groups should be mixed in a way that will promote productivity and also mixed ability. I like using the Array Interaction Inventory to get to know student interaction styles. Students who do not view themselves as solid math students will need to be mixed with those who do in order to gain status in this area. These two aspects of creating the groups are crucial. Students cannot gain status if they are with students of the same status. There would be no opportunity gained by using a homogeneous group to achieve this goal.
The next important aspect of this group work is the task itself. Just putting kids in groups to do a worksheet on a process skill, for example, will not offer the opportunity for discussion, multiple ways of looking at something, problem-solving, or the necessity to be interdependent. The task needs to be open-ended and require a variety of skill sets in order to be solved. For example, an open-ended question that requires a visual representation, a written solution, an equation, and an oral response uses a variety of types of skills that a student may be stronger in even if they aren’t typically good at math. Open-ended tasks require talking and this is a key to learning. I love the NRICH math site but many of the Common Core math problems out there are very good examples of tasks that would work. This may require more work but it also may drastically improve achievement. Think back to the example of exercise. If you spent time exercising to lose weight and actually lost it, you might continue, right? I would love to see tasks that others are using so please comment. Let’s change the way kids feel about math!
Cohen , E. (1994). Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom (2nd ed.). Teachers College Press.