Literacy in Math

By the end of the day last Thursday, my students and I had had enough. ISATs (our state standardized test) are coming up next week and, since we generally do not assess with multiple choice tests, I wanted to give them the experience before the big exam.

They worked through the practice test independently on Wednesday, and I had planned on reviewing half of the test on Thursday and the other half Friday, reviewing any concepts that were unclear or that they disagreed on. We spent the entire hour Thursday on TWO questions. I had to come up with a solution. There was no way that we were going to continue in that fashion. No one would have wanted to be there.

Thursday night I was having a conversation with my 4-year-old, telling her about my day. When she asked if she could come to my school to help, I suggested that she record her ideas in a movie and then I could share her ideas with my students. That gave me the solution.

I put students in six teams. Each team was assigned a block of questions that they had to work through. They not only had to solve the problems, but they had to be able to explain all of their mathematical thinking. This incorporated listening, speaking, reading and writing in one activity. All group members were required to participate and understand how to solve. When students thought that the problem was thoroughly explained, they got to record themselves solving the problem. Many self-assessed when they played back their videos, discovering that they really hadn't explain all ideas clearly. They continued to discuss with their groups in order to figure out what they had missed. While some were able to record once and move on to the next problem, most had to revise and rerecord at least once.

During this time I was able to confer with students and support language and math skills simultaneously. Conversations that I had with students during these conferences have served as an assessment tool. Feedback from students has been also incredibly powerful. Some of my struggling math students are understanding concepts now that they had not understood before because they have had the opportunity to discuss with peers and ask questions. They feel empowered and confidence, participation and engagement have all increased significantly.

Please click on this link to view the videos and feel free to add comments to this post!

http://sqworl.com/wagz3g