Tag: differentiation

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Practicing grace (Or: 15 ways to modify a textbook or worksheet)

Maybe it’s just me (except I know it’s not) But it’s easy to get caught up in an unattainable quest for teacher perfection. Especially here on the interwebs, where drive by comments are easy, and only the Pinterest-perfect shows in our feeds. 

But, if ever there was a year for letting go of teacher perfectionism….this is it. 

This will be — for many of us — a year of adapting and flexing and mostly making the best we can of decidedly not optimal situations. 

Personally, I am resolving to never complain about the photocopier again, because I so miss a physical office and a classroom that is not my laptop angled strategically for the best video conference background view. I will be grateful when we are back to it in a way I never was before.

And yet, the truth is: the photocopier frequently jammed, and it hasn’t stapled right in ages, and imperfect as it was, I will still be grateful to work on paper in a real classroom again (all the wistful sighs for group work, and physical manipulatives, and no more zoom sessions…) 

That teaching is better, and dearly missed, and also imperfect. 

I am hoping that this is a thing I will learn from all of this. (Because, we ought to learn something for all we’ve been through)  To be grateful, to flex and adapt, and also, to give some grace to the imperfections. Maybe, even, to my own. 

And so I’m thinking about the ways we adapt. Ourselves, but also our materials. 

Because, there is a place for creating the custom thing, beautifully designed and crafted precisely to meet your students where they are at.  And there’s a place for photocopying (or, uploading) the pretty good thing and giving your limited attention to something else.

Text books and worksheets are resources, if we use them well. I’m grateful for a shelf full (and grateful I brought them home when we first shut down) 

And, yet. They are not perfect either. 

Sometimes the examples are confusing or there isn’t enough practice or there’s too much of one thing. Or the critical thinking could be higher, or the focus clearer, or any number of other limitations.

So I hack it (read: adapt, modify)

Make a copy or a scan, block out the parts that don’t apply, hand-write in new instructions or questions, mix and match exercises or books, cut and paste if I have to.  Make it work. (Mentally apologize to the human who labored to creat the resource in the first place)

The result is not the prettiest, perfect-looking activity.  But it is a class that is planned, with a teacher who is calm(er?), and materials that are imperfect  but good (like the rest of us)  as we flex and adapt and make the best of it.

Picture of shelves of books, perhaps a library. Text: 15 easy ways to hack, tweak, adapt and modify math books and materials.

And so, 15 ways to hack math materials

(Get this as a PDF download in my free subscriber resources)

  1. Add a reading/writing/comprehension task: 

Nudge students to examine the  explanatory text and/or example problem (that always gets skipped!), by asking them to write a summary, or read/think/pair/share.

  1. Add a retrieval practice task. 

Reading/writing task + neuroscience. Read the passage, turn the paper over, and write what you remember on the back or in your notebook. 

  1. Isolate one skill.

Interleaving is great. But for the love of numbers, sometimes we need to learn one thing at a time. Select the questions that are most relevant, eliminate the others.

  1. Interleave: Merge two worksheets or problem sets. 

Use copies and a glue stick or scans and a computer to cut and paste questions from two skills together to review, or to practice distinguishing two similar tasks 

  1. Add an annotation task.

Ask students to underline or circle a particular type of information in each question. 

  1. Add a problem analysis task. 

“Before you solve each question, write the units you are looking for/operation you will use/restate the question/etc.”

  1. Break the question into steps

Particularly useful for complex problems. Add a), b) and c) with prompts to scaffold thinking.

  1. Change the question/answer format: 

Add or remove an answer bank, or convert multiple choice to open ended to differentiate or adjust the challenge level to you students

  1. Add or remove equivalent forms.

Ask students to give answer in two forms, or edit the answer key to accept un-simplified answers. Again, differentiation.

  1. Change number formats to reduce cognitive load

22/7 might be a better approximation of pi than 3.14, but sometimes you don’t want to reteach fractions in the middle of the geometry lesson. Sometimes you do. 

  1. Make it an error correction exercise 

Do the questions/worksheet, badly. Have students find and fix the mistakes.  (Especially satisfying if they can use red pens…)

  1. Add a creation task 

Ask students to write and solve their own questions(s) based on the examples provided 

  1. Add a metacognitive step

“How confident do you feel answering this kind of question?  Which questions were hardest? Easiest? Why? “

  1. Convert it to an interactive activity

Copy and cut apart sections to make task cards, or put questions and answers on separate cards to make a sort.

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Designing for Students + In the moment differentiation strategies

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.

Picture of a hand writing with a pen on paper. Text: Designing for Students: reponding to student needs for differentiation.

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:

  • 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.
  • 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.