Monday, November 27, 2017

Math Teaching: Focus in on Learners

All fifth graders took the unit assessment. Most performed well, but a few surprisingly did not perform as expected. What happened to these earnest and hard working students when they took the assessment?

In the next couple of weeks, I'm going to find time to sit down with those students one-to-one to watch them take the assessment again. I want to see how they approach the task, deconstruct language, check their work, and both write and type their results on paper and into the computer. Why didn't these students whose performance in class demonstrates good understanding of the material not do well on the offline/online assessment? What happened?

I know that these one-to-one sessions will result in excellent learning for both teacher and students. Students will better learn how to take a test and translate their knowledge into a positive assessment score while I'll learn how to teach these students better. This will be a main focus of the next month of teaching and learning.