1. "I get it!" (:

I’ve got this!

This we believe (NMSA, 2010).

* Educators value young adolescents and are prepared to teach them. Value Young Adolescents

This we believe (NMSA, 2010) provides sixteen characteristics of exemplary middle schools. This is the first characteristic and falls under the category of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment. 

Have you heard this comment: when students “get it,”  when the proverbial “light bulb goes on.” It is magical. Today, I was reviewing a tape (I tape myself teaching occasionally.) in which one of my students was working on a problem with his classmate. Students were working in small groups to practice problem-solving strategies of drawing a picture and communicating their thinking. While I was talking to a small group of students, he snuck in next to me to give me his whiteboard. In the video, I am shown looking at his work. When I nod, yes, you got it right, his face and body language looked like Tiger Woods when he made a putt at the Masters. “Yes, I’ve got this,” you hear him say. In the video, he then goes over to his partner to begin to share his knowledge.

Earlier in the day, I used a technique that builds background knowledge. Students sit in pairs or trios. I have eleven problems with multiple-choice answers taped individually to eleven sheets of construction paper. The questions are related to Scatterplots. Students number a whiteboard one to eleven and pass the sheets around from group to group. Together students read the problem and try to figure out the answer. Once they get an answer, they look on the back of the construction paper to see if they are correct. If they are correct, they write the answer down. If they are not correct, they look to see what the correct answer is and see if they can figure out why that answer is right. Once they understand, they write the correct answer on the whiteboard. I was standing next to two students who struggle. They were looking at a question that asked which graph had an outlier. One of the girls burst with energy and says, “I know this,” and her smile, her joy, and her enthusiasm were heart-warming.  She and her partner agreed on the answer, and both were excited to get it right.

In the first scenario, students were working on an extension to their knowledge. They were using graphing, the midpoint and distance formulas to determine where helicopters were and, using Pythagorean’s Theorem, were calculating how long each helicopter would take to get to a given point. In the second scenario, students have not been given formal instruction on scatter plots, outliers, or lines of best fit, but the process of looking at information and making educated guesses provided a positive backdrop for beginning a more in-depth at these standards. In both scenarios there was “student-talk” and “student-engagement.”

When students have opportunities to work independently, and when students are successful in their own learning, motivation and discipline problems diminish.

Advice

1)   Background knowledge does not have to be a series of notes from a power point presentation or a list of vocabulary words. Students can be given visual images, or models to examine and see what they see. I was looking at math resources and the first questions were always: “What do you think is going on here?”

2)   I often use pairs and trios to have students work together to consider problems. I find that if they have a chance to talk to one another, there is a chance for them to be able to articulate their knowledge. Especially in math, when the question can be the most challenging part of a word problem.

3)   Realize that when students are asked to work together, there may be a tendency for them to be “off-task.” When you give independent work, you must constantly move around the room and monitor them. This becomes even more important when students have a computer in front of them. (:

4)   Finally, finding ways to give immediate feedback is critical when students are working on independent work. The first activity had the answers on the back of the sheet and while some students looked at the answer first, the process allowed them to gain and/or reinforce their knowledge of scatterplots. In the video I was moving around checking students’ work as they finished each problem.