Category: Lesson Plan Ideas

Lesson plan ideas for teaching HiSET/GED math in adult basic education classes. Lesson plan  ideas include examples of real  math lesson plans that work in ABE,  plus resources you can use to teach math to adult learners.

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Teaching the Test

Teach the students, not the test.

I am quite certain that what I care most about teaching is that you, yes, you the one who never got above a C in math class, can learn anything, even math. Teaching the students.

Except that what my students care most about passing a test (HISET) that stands between them and big dreams (jobs and college and examples for their kids and a sense of pride at finally doing the thing they quit years ago) And, there’s something worthy in helping them reach those goals, and it is nice proof of my basic thesis when they do it …so, yeah, we do kind of teach the test, too.

In a perfect world it would be different, but in this world, I’ve made some peace with the idea that it’s possible to teach both.

 

I have not, however, settled on a favorite way to actually, effectively incorporate test practice into class, so I’m giving it some thought before the rush of the school year.

The challenges:

How to give enough to expose them to the breadth and challenge of the test, without sending them into overwhelm.

How to connect it to our current learning and prepare them for an exam that covers approximately 5 years of K12 math standards.  (Yes, really: 6th grade area to high school algebra)

How to fit it in an already over-stuffed curriculum.

 

Past attempts:

Give interested students practice tests to take home.  (This only really works with a subset of students who are pretty prepared and pretty self directed)

Slip questions from the practice tests in to my weekly review routine  (A keeper, I think, although probably not enough by itself)

Collect multiple questions relevant to our topic from across the stack of practice tests, make it part of the lesson (Super-laborious until we found an intern to help us organize, now only moderately laborious)

Review sessions, on those random end of term/all-the-interuptions days when you can’t teach anything new anyways.  (Not bad. Not brilliant, I don’t think, but not bad)

 

Additions for this fall:

Easy win: Bubble sheets. Apparently one student was totally thrown off by the answer sheet when she took the exam last year.  I put “use bubble sheets in class each trimester” on my goals list. *Check*

Question of the Day: One practice test question every week, slipped into the routine of the class.  I spent one distinctly not-fun afternoon sorting through tests and picking a couple dozen out. This is the exposure therapy theory of math teaching: see the test questions often enough and they’re less intimidating.

 

But, I’m still in search of structures for those random review days that make them something more than solo worksheet time. Especially, ones that don’t rely on speed, shouting out answers, or competition to make them game-y. My students have enough math anxiety already, thank you very much.

 

My favorites so far:

These 3 problems all have the same answer. What is it? Where ‘answer’ means: the same letter on the multiple choice format questions.  This let me mix in questions students were likely to get with stretch questions without inducing overwhelm. It worked particularly well in groups, where different people knew different questions and could check each other.

Test question sort When you’re being tested on 5 years worth of standards all at once, quickly identifying what math you need to use is crucial. And hard. So we say, lets not worry about the answers for a little while and focus on identifying what we’re being asked to do.  Also, my students are very, very familiar with card sorts.

 

But, really, I could use more ideas. My best googling turns up few ideas that suit my class 🙁

 

 

 

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Back. Also, Lesson Sketch: Learning Strategies

So, that happened.

If, we define ‘that’ to mean life, a slight case of overwhelm, and an unplanned 5 month break.

 

But, it’s summer. I’ve been to the ocean, I’m off from teaching, and I now have the bandwidth to come back to this.

And, with my newly cleared head, I’m thinking about one of my favorite lessons.

 

Lesson Sketch: Learning Strategies

Why: 

I preach and plead for my adult students to study outside of class (see , por ejemplo: homework, more homework and planning for homework)

But —  I know the research: most students don’t use particularly efficient strategies to study. I think this doubly applies to my adults who didn’t have great success in the school the first time. And, they have even less time to waste on inefficient studying, this time around.

So, I’ve added preaching and pleading to study effectively. 

Also, this is one of a set of first class of the term exercises I use to ease people into doing math and being a student again. (Other examples: Stuck Strategies, Retrieval Practice)

 

What: Introducing research-backed strategies for effective learning + simple data and analysis.

The Learning Scientists have summarized lots of cognitive research to highlight 6 strategies. I rarely have enough students or time that it makes sense to do all 6, but they’re there if you do. For my class, I generally prioritize: Spaced Practice,  Interleaving, Retrieval Practice and Elaboration. 

 

How: 

I introduce the topic. I might talk about how scientists do experiments to see what works (I might add that if I had known you could do experiments about learning, not just chemistry or physics, I might have liked science better in high school)  I might talk about making the best use of our time, or about shaking things up/experimenting with new techniques, I might remind them how frustrating it is to forget what they’ve learned.

 

Then, I split the class into groups, and assign each group a strategy. One time I gave out these posters, more recently it’s been the bookmarks, because less is more. If tech wasn’t a headache, I’d try the videos. The group is in charge of working together until everyone understands the strategy.  (This can take some coaching) Then we jigsaw, and they teach it to their peers. (More coaching)

 

Once everyone understands the strategies, we take a poll:

Do you already do this?

Will you try it this term?

 

Then I have students analyze the data for the strategy they started with. Depending on the class and the time of year, they might find the percent, ratio and/or fraction of the class who gave each answer.  If I have more time, we might make graphs of the results. In a way less time pressured world, we might make a bulletin board display with the strategies and our data and study tips for other students at school.

 

Results:

Spaced practice is a hit. (at least in theory) Whether it happens or not, in the day to day of busy lives, they get this idea. In the great division between tortoises and hares, many of my students are tortoises. Slow and steady sounds good.

Interleaving, on the other hand,  is a hard sell. It just sounds so much harder and more confusing, and math is hard and confusing enough, thankyouverymuch.  (Although I make them do interleaved practice every week and they tell me it helps, so maybe someday…)

 

Next Steps:

Truth… this is the first class of the term and by the second we’re off and running, and it’s hard to get back to this. But, yeah, one-off’s are not all that helpful.

So, I’m currently pondering ways to fit a follow up in.  I’d love to collect a post- round of data later in the term to see if anyone is actually rying them out.

 

 

Free Resource: I fancied up my tally sheets a bit (ahem, data collection tools) and I’m making them available for free in my TPT Store

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Lesson Sketch: Reading Algebra (Card Sort + Critical Thinking)

Topic: Reading Algebra (CCRS: A.SSE.1a)

Why:

Half of the battle with algebra (well, some significant fraction of the battle anyways, because half is always anxiety and focus and  grit and all the metacognitive things) is just reading algebra. The variables, the changes in notation and conventions, it looks so unfamiliar to new learners. And for those inclined to doubt their math abilities, a string of letters and a lack of familiar symbols is often a trigger to shut down.

So, a lesson to get used it to before we try to do anything with it.

What:

  1. A warm up: Sal Kahn answers a darn good question “Why all the Letters in Algebra”
  2. Some translation (aka direct instruction on the conventions)
  3. And, then the core of the lesson. A card sort. We matched cards with a x b to cards with ab, and b x b to b2, and we kept going a x b x b, and b 2, etc. etc.

(I love card sorts. I love how they prompt collaborative work, and aren’t worksheets, make things a tiny bit more tangible. I particularly love them for teaching equivalence. I wrote here about how playing Concentration is a go to activity for me)

Pro Tip: My new favorite way to make card sorts is using GoogleSlides. Subscribe to receive my tips.

  1. But, as much as I love card sorts, I’ve been thinking about how I could raise the bar, and ask students to do some deeper thinking (to mix directional metaphors)

So after we matched the cards, I distributed some critical thinking questions:  Which were hard? Which were easy? Why do certain cards go together? What do the symbols mean? Write your own examples (because, goals )

Results: It was the first math class after vacation, and all of us were having a slow time getting back to work/school, so something like three quarters of my class conveniently, um, overlooked, the question that asked them to write with words the first time through.

But, in the end, I had one of the best student comments I’ve seen in a while:

Student writing "Tho my mind was pudding we eased into learning. Was very nice"

Pudding brain. I totally get this metaphor.

Also, I take that as a victory.

(This if from my metacognitive exit tickets, read more here)

And, those extra questions? I added them in and prettied it up, and put it all on Teachers pay Teaches for the next person teaching their students to read algebra.

Fall 2020 Update: I love this activty, but found it often wasn’t enough practice on it’s own…. so I made 8 different worksheets. #onaroll #differentiation.

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App Day

We are decidedly not that school with the chrome books and the ipads and the smart boards and all the digital tools.

We’re luckier than many with a pretty-functional computer lab, and a teachers’ desktop/projector set up in the class, and I am grateful for every move I’ve made to digitize my prep.

But, there’s a clunky log in/password system system and students of varying digital literacy and all the inertia to fight to move to the lab. So, mostly math class is a pencil and paper kind of operation for my students, with lots of google docs and TEDEd’s for me.

 

But the technology they all have is, of course, the phones.

Sometimes a distraction.

Often a necessity, for a room full of parents with patchy childcare arrangements.

My latest recruit in the campaign to make math happen at home.

 

This fall I declared “App Day”  in each of my classes (well, I declared it in my head, anyways)

4 pm – Send Remind group text, “bring your phone and save this link”

We already use Remind for announcements and absences, my goal is to nudge people into doing math between classes by sending out resources/practice problems/math encouragement . I’m, counting on the ‘schedule’ feature, so I can pick the resources while class is fresh in my mind, and set it up to send later in the week.

(yada, yada, yada; class starts, human interactions and pencil and paper work…)

6 pm –  Mass downloading of Quizlet. (wifi, slighly overwhelmed)

Quizlet motivation: I’m tired of smart, hard working students getting problems wrong because they mix up ‘mean’ and ‘median’, even though they know how to do both. But also, it takes approximately no time to study a set of flashcards, and you don’t even need pen/paper/calculator, so this is the lowest barrier to entry math studying I can think of.

(yada, yada, yada; learning, talking, writing, non-tech interactions)

7 pm – Practice Options: Paper or Kahn

Like Quizlet, my motivation is largely about lowering the barriers to math entry. If it’s on your phone, that you’re scrolling through while you’re in the doctor’s office/school parking lot/random down time anyways, it’s a lot easier to study than the notebook in the school bag.  Last year I said something like “there’s this app, go try it” with unsurprisingly tepid results, this year, I’m making a point to use it in class.  On App Day, I said “start at X and see how far you can get” Other days “watch video Y” shows up on a challenge card 

 

kahn
(Also, student choice)

 

 

Since then…

Some students use and like Quizlet, some love Kahn. I’ve shoehorned both into class.

Remind makes communicating vastly easier. My math sending is sporadic, but it felt great to schedule a message on a cancelled class night “Missing math? Try this…”

I’m looking at the start of a new trimester, and planning App Day, Part 2 for the new students joining us.

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Challenge (aka Task) Cards

Challenge

A couple of my favorite lessons, recently, have been basically amp’ed up task cards.

I call them “challenges”, because it sounds more motivating than tasks, and make each challenge rather bigger than some of the (often-elementary-grades) card sets I see online.  Last night, 7 cards took my fastest group about an hour.  

I love how easy it makes differentiation, and how many different kinds of thinking we can get in one class.

For a lesson like this, where the cards are the class, I’m sequencing them so I can gradually increase the challenge and cover the content in an order that makes sense.

For a couple of topics, we’ve learned a topic without any stand and lecture moments, just cards and small groups and conversations when questions come up. (To be fair, I’m strategic about these topics – area of a quadrilateral is pretty gentle learning curve, I don’t know that I’d try that with introducing algebraic equations)

So, while I’m loving cards, I pulled together a few of my favorite stems (and a few examples)

  • Read and summarize

  • Look at a (completed) example problem, make observations about how it was solved

  • Complete guided notes  (I’ll break format to give them a card with the instructions + a copy of the notes to keep)

  • Vocab: matching words and definitions, or a card pointing to a quizlet set.vocab
  • Put the steps in order and/or match a description of a step to its mathematical representation

steps

  • Solve a few problems (usually a few cards in a class set with different kinds of problems) plus or minus a reflection question.

  • A mini-sort or search 

sort

 

  • How is ___ similar or different from ___ ?

  • Guess and googleguess google

 

  • A challenge to preview the next lesson

 

 

My sequencing mostly follows a pretty familiar pattern: some input-y cards (reading, examples etc.) some supported practice (sorting steps etc.), independent practice, then challenges or create your own. 

One of my secret-but-not-really objectives is that they’re learning skills for independent learning. Being able to look at and make sense of an example problem, or a paragraph of math book, or to make a guess and then check it, will serve them well when they get to college math homework.  

And, challenge cards do a good job of demonstrating that they can learn something without me standing at the board with the answers. (My adults, having gone through mostly-not-successful school already often have pretty traditional ideas about what math class should look like)

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Goals: Student Written Problems

I’m a goals kind of person. I like them, find them helpful, function best when I’m clear on them. (Classic upholder, for any other Gretchen Rubin fans) So, the document that organizes all of my teaching is topped by a bullet pointed list of goals.

(Best goal ever: “Actually use sick time” That was actually helpful)

This fall, one says “incorporate student-written math tasks/problems/questions”

It’s an attempt to share agency, to give a confidence boost (you, yes, you, can write a math problem…), to switch up the formats (no worksheets!), to have open ended tasks.

 

So, this month I’ve tried two formats, with three topics, in two different classes.  (Because, upholder with goals)

 

Version 1: Passing Problems

The order of operations:

Introduce a model, a template, a pattern, a way to isolate a particular skill. (For us, expressions like 5+3×2 and (5+3)x2 that are different only in their parentheses)

               Students write similar problems on index cards.

Check and double check the cards, write answers on the back.

Collect, shuffle, redistribute cards

Do the problem, without writing the card. (Repeat, and repeat, and repeat this instruction. The impulse to write on the cards instead of the scrap paper is strong)

Check the answer

               Pass the card to the right, receive a new card.

Repeat.

 

Version 2:  Card Sort

The order of operations:

Introduce new material

Small groups complete pre-existing card sort

(This so far, is a classic mathacognitive lesson. I have a bin full of card-sort-like activities )

Students write their own pairs of cards to be sorted.

Once checked, the new cards are scrambled and displayed with our doc cam

The class repeats the process of reuniting the pairs with their own newly-written cards. (For my class, students are just writing on notebook paper which goes with which, you could have a whole class activity of physically moving and matching the pairs, or make copies for everyone to cut out and arrange)

 

Particularly with the passing problems, there was a fair amount of incredulous staring, with verbal and non-verbal versions of ‘you want me to write the problem?!?’

But, incredulity/confusion aside, everyone eventually wrote their own problems and solved some of their classmates’, so I’m declaring it a victory and looking for the next spot to have them write the problems.

 

Bonus: It inspired me to upgrade from my previous, handwritten, kind-of-rushed, oops-there’s-an-error cards to a new actually-typed-and-formatted set of my exponent card sort.

Further Bonus: I was on a roll, so I typed up my cards, then kept going until I had a whole pack of different exponent cards and instructions and templates and a lesson plan for student-written cards. They’re available on TeachersPayTeachers if you’re interested)

 

card sort cover

 

 

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Scaffolding Homework and Asynchronous Work

Originally published Oct. 2018, updated Nov. 2020

Working at home is hard for my students. They’re mostly working parents, so they’ve already juggled shifts and childcare to get to class a couple of nights a week.

And then we ask them to find more time for homework.

It doesn’t always work.

But we want it to, because once a week math classes are not enough.

It is painfully easy to work hard in class, make progress, grasp a challenging concept, and then leave, think about everything except math, and come back a week later, feeling like you’ve forgotten everything you learned.

My homework system is intentionally flexible, but still.

To work independently you have to find the time, and the motivation, and the materials, and the focus, and get everyone else to let you focus. And you have to know where to start, and not give up when you get stuck.

This year, I’m experimenting with really planning for it.

Text "Scaffolding Asynchronous Learning" Image shows a desk with computer, notebook, pen, scissors and other supplies.

Week 1: Plan

We brainstormed times they might fit work into their lives. Things like: on my lunch break, after the kids go to bed, in the waiting room. I made a point to frame the conversation as small bits of time, that did not have to look like homework at the kitchen table for an hour after dinner.  They thought about their schedules and made plans, and back up plans. I made copies: one for them, one for me.

Week 2: Check in

I returned their plans and asked them to write one of two notes on the back. If the plan worked, what about it worked? OR If the plan didn’t work, what would they do differently next week?

Week 3: Repeat

Return the plans, write another note. This time, I added a list of some of the best tips from their Week 2 check ins and asked them to think about adopting some of their classmates’ ideas.

Three weeks in a row is about as much time as I feel like I can devote to this right now, but I kept their twice annotated plans, and they’ll make a reappearance later in the semester (especially if homework starts to lag)

And, can I take a minute to brag about a student who has embraced this?

This student is back in school for the first time in years, a single mom working in  the kind of entry level health care job that’s lots of hands on work, for little money.  She downloaded Kahn Academy, tried it, and came in discouraged a few weeks ago that she was working at a lower level than her young son.

This week, she came in beaming and eager to show me how her scores had gone up.

She was proud of the score.

I was proud of how she made it happen: Studying on her half-hour lunch breaks four days in a row, plus a few random times when she had a few free minutes.

I wanted to get up on a soap box and point her dedication out as an example to everyone in the class. She wouldn’t have appreciated that, though, so I just told her I was proud of her. (And then told you all about it….)

<3

Fall 2020: Expanded and updated tools to scaffold independent and asynchronous work.

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Growth Mindset

It’s probably not a surprise that I talk about a growth mindset with my classes. I also talk about neurons, and how to study, and test taking and anxiety, and metacognition and finding your best way to learn.

I make it part of math lesson: there’s a giant decimal number line on the floor and we position ourselves along it to start the discussion (and get familiar with decimals)

Last year, I made a note

“I’m always surprised at how growth-y my students are.”

But really, it makes sense that the people who decide to show up after working and taking care of the family and everything else to learn algebra would identify with grit (the most emphatic answers are always about the value of effort)

This year, I updated the questions on my assessment, and made some of them math specific. And I had my entire class piled on top of each other to declare that there are math people in the world and there are non-math people and that was that, end of discussion, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

And it broke my heart.

And made me mad.

Because I didn’t have to ask whether they thought they were math people or not.  They might believe that effort matters, but they are also certain they are not math people.

I told them there’s no math brain that scientists can find. And I showed them Sal Kahn talking about neurons, and Jo Boaler. Before that I told them all about my belief in them, and that I hadn’t liked math in high school either, and that we all learn in our own ways.

But mostly, I mentally glared at all the people, and messages, and experiences that told them they couldn’t do this.

And remembered that convincing them otherwise is the most important part of my job.

My growth mindset number line questions (plus variations) are available on TeachersPayTeachers

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Lesson Sketch: Retrieval Practice

Usually, we think of first days as starting from scratch. That’s never fully true – students are always bringing previous experiences with them. But it’s particularly not true for my classes this year.  Because, interesting things about adult ed: since students start at multiple times and progress at their own pace, I sometimes (this year) have a ‘new’ class, that’s composed almost entirely of returning students.

So, rather than spend most of the first day on syllabus-reviewing and class-explaining, or even on getting to know you’s (and my standard fist-day math move, of combining math with get to know you activities) we’re starting by remembering (retrieving, if you’re a neuroscientist) what we already know. And then doing math about that math (it’s very meta)

Why:

I start the year knowing what they know (more or less) without the anxiety of a pre-assessment (hello, formative assessment) (Also, they do the data analysis for me….)

They start the year knowing what they know (hello, confidence boost)

It brings some of what they already know to the top of mind (after a summer of probably not thinking about math) so, it’s a sort of global activation of prior knowledge.

Retrieval practice is good for the brain and the memories.

Talking about retrieval practice on the first day sets a tone for talking about metacognition and effective learning all year.

Working in pairs on the first day sets a tone for collaborative learning. (I’ll be strategically matching new and veteran students into pairs)

It passes my ‘points on the board’ test (Finding a percent should be a review for most returning students, but new or returning, we walk out knowing we know at least one piece of math)

Teaching percents the first day means they can start grading their own cumulative reviews on the second day.

I think doing math with real, it came from us data, helps math feel less like random torture they have to endure to get a credential, and more like a tool that tells us something about the world (ok, more of them still think it’s torture than a tool, but I try)

How:

Retrieval: An independent brainstorm then a pair-share to bring months old math memories to the surface.

I’m making sure to ask my students about both the math they remember (I remember how to do percents, I remember that y is the vertical axis) and what they remember about themselves as math learners (I remember that I like to work in groups, I remember that writing notes helps my memory).

This expands the discussion in metacognitive ways, and it gives anyone who is panicking about (not) remembering math a way to participate.

Data & Analysis: We’re posting memories as a gallery walk, making tally marks of agreements then calculating the percent of students who share our memories.

Follow up: We’ll practice finding percents, then have a chance to follow up on an independent goal (aka, pick something from my milk crates full of materials) to review a topic they feel they sort-of-but-not-really remember

Implementation

I’m implementing as a first-class activity, but I can see it working well after a shorter break too (Welcome back from winter/April/spring/whatever break! What do you remember from before?) or as a spiral review/comprehension check at a few strategic point during the year (We’re having a review day! But first, what do you remember already?)

Lesson plan and materials

(Actually, I was having fun – so I made variations to use with fractions or ratios, instead of percents, and included a bunch of extension ideas)

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Challenges

It’s May.

There’s a month left of school. We just went through a round of testing. And we’re all a little fried.

And so, I was sitting in my office a few classes ago, with a topic (functions),  no particular lesson plan inspiration, and a textbook with a nice series of activities that checked all the boxes (mixed question/task types, at the right level, moving smoothly up Blooms…) I’ll be honest,  “Class, please complete the exercises on pages __ to ___” was a tempting plan.

Except

It’s May. The students are fried, they’ve worked hard all year and focusing on a textbook for a big chunk of class now was just not going to work.  They’re good, they’d try, but who could blame them for losing interest?

But was a nice series of activities, and I’m fried enough myself that I didn’t want to waste a perfectly good set of learning materials.

 

Solution: Envelopes.  Scissors. Some re-framing.

 

I made copies and started cutting and sorting. Those vocab words? A tiny matching activity, in an envelope. A big #1 on the front.  That exercise identifying functions? Cut apart and stuck in an envelope, it’s a card sort. With a big #2 on the front. That other exercise? I just stuck it in an envelope. Add a graph, ask for a sentence, envelope, envelope.

With a few additions and some cutting and editing, I soon had a few copies each of six enveloped tasks. I called them challenges and handed out the envelopes with that big #1 on the front. I told my students when they had completed the first challenge, they could exchange it for #2.

And it worked.

The mystery of the envelopes, the challenge, the sense of accomplishment and progress as they exchanged one envelope for the next added enough interest that they worked hard and stayed engaged the whole class.

In May.

When we’re all fried.   (Did I mention that fact?)

 

I love that they worked hard and learned.

But, I also love that I got a new tool in my teacher-kit.

Cut it up, put it in envelopes, set up a challenge – that’s a transferable skill-set for the next time I’m contemplating “please complete the exercises on page…”