These are strange times.
It hardly seems that I should have to say it any more, it’s been said so often. And yet, these are strange times.
They are hard, and sometimes too full of video conferences, and sometimes not full enough with anything else. Pandemics are many things: stressful and scary and dramatic and changing all the things. And also, boring. I am — personally — dearly missing the mental stimulation of life before COVID.
I’m filling some of that space with designing materials, because staying busy helps, and so does — for a few minutes at least — thinking about a future, when this will be done, and we will be back in our classrooms, doing our thing.
Sometimes I design materials because inspiration hits, or I saw something on twitter that looked fun, or some PD told me that the best way do teach X was to do Y.
Mostly, though, I design materials for my students.
They’re awesome. (I’ve might have said this before)
And, I am a firm believer in differentiation, and student choice, and teaching them to be effective, independent learners.
And so, I want to be able to give them exactly the right work, for exactly where they are.
All of which is to say, last winter a student asked me for more practice with order of operations that had division bars.
Something about the format (the resemblance to fractions? the assumed grouping symbols?) threw him off and he was metacognitively aware enough to notice it and ask for practice with the challenge point.
Go him.
I love when my students get to this point in their learning. I said ‘absolutely you can have more practice, let me go find some’
And, this seemed easy.
It was straight numerical computation practice. Open the classroom computer, google “order of operations with division bars” , click print, and my student will be on his way. Make a couple copies for the other students who chime in with ‘me too’s’ and ‘can I have one” (because they would, they’re awesome like that)
Differentiation, check.
Except it didn’t work.
Maybe my google skills were off, or I checked the wrong textbooks, but I found an abundance of math … but not quite what I (really, he) wanted.
In the moment, I’m pretty sure I gave up and made up some problems on scrap paper.
Which, is responsive and differentiated. But also, this is why I design materials. (Also, because, pandemics)
Because, if he needed practice, someone else probably will too. And he had thought to notice a point that I (and apparently the math publishing world?) hadn’t paid much attention to before.
I will now.
And, yet.
Practicalities.
In the moment, we can’t stop class to design something for each student. And, it took me months to design something for him at all. He has moved on.
Part of the art of teaching — that all the lesson plans in the world can’t quite capture — is how we respond and pivot and creatively problem solve mid-class, when a student has a question.
We can’t fully know what questions or needs will come. But we can know that some questions will come, and we can be ready:
- Plan for choices. Having a few options during independent practice won’t cover every particular student need, but it covers more than when I used to have only one activity.
- Keep our options open. Among the best investments in my classroom: three milk crates + hanging files of math work. I can pull dozens of worksheets when I need them. For distance learning, I’m setting up a folder in Google Drive to play a similar role.
- Encourage students to articulate what they need. (Some of my tools for this: metacognitive logs, exit tickets)
- Adapt the materials we do have at hand. Pick only a few problems to do, tweak the ones there (I forget how many negative signs/fractions/etc. I’ve whited out, because sometimes we need a break), add a task to a worksheet etc.
- Take note of the particular points students struggle, so we can prepare or research materials for next time. File the info or resources where we’ll find when the curriculum comes back around.
