Tag: adult basic education

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Wins And Losses

It’s more fun to talk about the wins, but we learn so much from the losses (if we take the time to look). Wins and Losses is a chance for me to reflect on one of each.

(Also, I could use a better series title, stay tuned for updates or suggestions)

 

Loss:  Group Dynamics

I have one class with a particularly challenging mix of personalities. Some super quiet, some rather oblivious to social cues about volume and sharing air time, and a wide range of maturity, mental health, math skills, personalities and opinions about school. Individually, they all have plenty of things going for them, but it’s not a group that’s gelled.

After a frustrating class where more of my energy when to classroom management than to teaching, I decided to break it up. Small groups, spread far enough apart that they couldn’t distract each other, each with one of my generous classroom volunteers facilitating.

I gave them a beautiful activity, from a thoughtful resource, setting up functions by exploring the calories burned in different activities. Last time I used this, I had one student skipping soda and climbing the stairs by the end of class.

This time, I had, instead of one classroom full of conflicting dynamics, two. I was short a volunteer, so larger groups than planned, and had designed the groups to spread out the different management problems. In the process, I got groups with vastly different math skills, and no interest in working together. The quick ones were bored, the slow workers were lost, and I got “Is this on the test?” instead of “I’m taking the stairs”

 

Take away: Design for learning first, then dynamics. If I were to do it again, I might do more homogeneous groups and give chocolate/many thanks/lots of support to the volunteers working with the more challenging ones.    

 

Win: Fractions

I don’t know about those of you teaching K12, but in ABE, fractions are a black hole filled with quick sand (or some other appropriately sticky metaphor). They’re counterintuitive, take for-EVER, set off students’ math anxiety, and then rarely appear on the HiSET.

*grumble*

But last week, my students figured out how to add fractions, with no explicit instruction on my part.

I gave them fraction circles, and visuals, and partners and said “observe, try it and report back”.  And they reported back a neat summary of adding fractions, and that it was easy. I typed up their observations, gave everyone a copy and moved on to mixed numbers.

Take away:  Trust them. With the right supports, and the right sized step (we saved uncommon denominators for the next class) they can do it.

 

 

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Homework | Reflection Folders

My homework routine is thoroughly a product of my student body: adults with wildly diverging math preparation/skills, who are motivate by a test/goal with real implications for their lives, but who also lead full adult lives that leave little time for math homework.

I have decided that, in this context, assigning problems x through y, and expecting them all to be done next Thursday is a fool’s errand. (Some adult ed teachers incorporate more traditional homework assignments into their class. But for me/my classes, it just didn’t seem to work.)

We’ve evolved a more choose your own adventure version: I give practice work at the end of each lesson, and we have a lively and well-packed set of milk crates that house materials covering our full curriculum. Students do what they can of what they think they need.

I doubt the choose your own homework system is transferable to many classes (although that’s a shame) What’s more transferable, and where I want to spend more time, is the folder it goes in.

How it works:

Each of my students gets a homework folder. There’s nothing special except a bright color, chosen to cut down on the chance it gets lost in the piles of papers. Inside is a log.

Each week, I collect this folder, and and I ask students to complete their log. Whether they’ve done pages and pages of math, or worked double shifts and done no math beyond tallying their hours, I ask for a note: What did you do? How’d it go? Anything else do you want me to know?

I look at their log, note whether or not math happened, and respond to their comments before returning their folders.

Here’s a version of the no-frills homework log I’ve been using. And the more elaborate log I’m planning to switch to next year.

What I love:

  • It allows a private dialogue for the shy ones, or the ones who are struggling, or out of sync with the class.

(I occasionally get profound comments here that I can’t imagine hearing out loud in class, especially the quiet confessions of ‘I think I’m starting get/like/learn math…’)

  • Answering what ‘did I do?’ is a nice level of accountability. I am not scolding them about homework, but they are looking in black and white and their own handwriting at the results of the week. Every week.
  • But really, I think the crucial element is facing that “how’d it go?” question every time. Even if they give me a one word answer, they’ve had to think back over that work and decide between “good”, “ok” and “hard”. I want to foster this habit of reflection in and out of class, and this is the best means I’ve found so far (it’s also the third leg of the metacognition stool we’re building each week)

The results:

  • The good: I usually have a student or two at a time who winds up with a bit of a correspondence course on some math skills they need, but that is separate (and often ahead of) the regular class. They try X, learn most of it, identify a need to learn Y, I give it to them and we repeat.
  • The bad: The student who decided to take algebra from the crates way before she was ready and came to class the next time on the edge of tears because she had convinced herself she was hopeless.
  • The usual: Some weeks homework happens, some weeks life happens instead. When homework does happen, it’s usually a mix of class topics and review.  The comments are short, mostly prosaic, but they’re there. They get consistent encouragement to work at home, and to reflect on their learning.

Adapting

  • Perhaps you take the folder and log procedure, and use it to reflect on more traditional assignments. (What did you do to complete the problem set? How did that go?…)
  • For my class, there’s no distinction between ‘homework’ and ‘preparing for the test’. I can imagine adapting this to focus on “studying” to encourage good habits; and/or blending the two. (Which might be a great conversation to have with students – ie, that ‘homework’ and ‘studying’ have the same purpose, to promote learning)
  • If your homework routine involves more collecting than mine, perhaps it’s not a folder, but something like a wrapper that gets attached to the assignment
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Constant Cumulative Review: Pt. 3 Putting it into Practice

Read: Part 1: Start with Why , Part 2: Making Materials without Going Insane and/or Classroom Routines: You will metacognate for background

(In brief – My classes start with a cumulative review every week, it’s a process, and I love it)

Once I had figured out how I could make materials, I had to figure out how they’d fit into my classes. In the end, we built a multi step routine that works for us.

  1. This is my ‘do now’. The copies are waiting on the front table when students arrive, and so early or late they know to start when they get to class. It’s open notes (to encourage note taking and using), and question-asking is allowed (so confusion gets cleared up).
  1. When students are done they correct it themselves with an answer key. And  I’m making (slow/uphill) progress at teaching them to use the key and/or questions as a tool to understand the ones they missed on the first try (instead of marking a despairing X and moving on).
  1. Each student has a (plain manila file) folder with a log stapled inside, where they file the corrected review sheets + their scores + a comment (my metacognition!). I keep the folders in the classroom so they don’t get lost, and so I can review periodically and see how students are progressing)

(I have ambitions of these folders working/feeling more like portfolios, but so far they remain just collection points)

Here’s a version of the score/comment log that I use

  1. As they finish the folders, my students know there are milk crates full of materials – and that their task is to grab something they need to brush up, and work independently until the next activity starts. (Some need more reminding of this knowledge than others, but in general, they’ve just had a good reminder of what math needs some practice)

 

While students are arriving/settling/working on this review, I’m also collecting and checking homework folders and finishing any set up for the rest of the lesson.

 

Essential elements:

Students doing most of the work.  I answer questions and attend to those who are stuck, or off-course, or need a nudge to work, but after the first couple of rounds most of my students can handle most of this process.

Making it routine. My students can do much of the work because they’ve done it before. The first weeks of the term, I spend more time directing the process, but they get into the routine pretty quickly. The routine also saves my brain – I don’t have to decide how we’re starting class, or figure out how to do review because I’ve already set that up. I’m grateful to put that brain power to some other planning question.