trying to plan new maths intervention programme

Boy, especially in math I find students of various ages with the same exact problems. Hey, they’ve all been having stuff they don’t understand waved at them, been made to pretend to attempt to do it… and at teh end of the year they are still basically where they started. No surprise that studetns in different years have stalled out at basically the same place.
You’d do them an incredible favor to start ‘em with the basics… I mean, things like what subtraction is (which many of my college kiddos have to learn — somehow they missed that). Just having them know the difference between 2 to the third power and 2 x 3… they’d be ahead of many of their grade mates.

In On Cloud Nine, she starts with imaging nos and the first math worked on is addition. I agree with all that. I would guess that you ask some adults here with math disabilities they will say they count on their fingers. To me this indicates that they didn’t really ever learn addition— I mean internalize it to the extent of being able to do adding without assistance.

The typical normal math curriculum pushes kids too fast out of the concrete, so they can’t really function. Of course there are some real wierd new new math stuff going on so maybe I can’t comment on that. Just been looking at some catalogues.

—des

I have taught ‘Math Blocks’ to children who are functioning at similar levels, but differing ages. I try to buddy children in the group into pairs and develop a peer tutoring scheme which then usually helps both parties. The difficulty is that a lot of time and prep has to be put in before hand, including in some cases where I train the older child to ‘tutor’ (whilst learning without realising it) the younger child.
MAth Blocks need to be kept to a small group of about eight to ten children. I found by doing it this way it built the self-esteem for the older child, and developed a strong relationship between the two children. The younger child is enthralled to have an older child help them out and increases their concentration level and the desire to achieve. :D :D

thanks for the responses. one of the biggest challenges willl be the timetabling of the blocks to fit in with the whole school programme of specialist teachers etc. This will need the support of admin.

So from what I am hearing here is that nobody thinks that the older students will feel bad because thye are working wiyh younger students. the idea of learning buddies is great. I have followed a similiar concept wiuth peer reading tutor and that has worked.

There would need to be initial assessment to collect baseline data.

Ellie

Oh, feeling bad…
… that can be a different story. You *do* have to handle it gently and/or firmly.
It seems almost universal that students are SURE they know math so much better than teachers think they do. They are always placed too low.
I have learned to gently, firmly say “You may well be right, but you are here now, so let’s learn some math. Let’s make it so you know it so well there’s just no question at all.”
“Well, I know it, but I always freeze on the tests!!!”
“Okay, we’ll learn it so well that even at 20 below zero, you still know it.”
(This is not to invalidate test anxiety… but usually it is *not* the primary reason fo rthose low grades, and gradual desensitization and deep mastery is a respected way of dealing wiht real anxieties.)
Feelings and math do need to be conscioulsy dealt with.