Knowing My Students

Written by Mr. DeGrasse

As an educator it is important for me to get to know my students. What this means is going deeper than just finding out their favourite sport or who their best friend is. This means I need to get to know how to teach each student and get to know how each student learns.

Each student that walks into my classroom is different. They are not cookie cutters of each other, but instead are complex individuals. Each brings personal experiences, interests, strengths and areas of need. So why, as a teacher, would I present the material in my classroom to each student the same? Instead, I should strive to teach the material covered in class in a way that suits each student’s learning style. Forcing every student to learn one way will only cause anxiety, confusion, and frustration within the class. Some may say that in a class of 20 to 30 students it is next to impossible to individualize for each student. I say, however, that it is almost impossible for a student to succeed in school if you don’t individualize. I would compare it to making someone run the 100m with a leg cramp or play soccer using only their left foot. It could be done, but why limit their potential? At Bridgeway, because the class sizes are smaller and we have access to information about a student’s learning disability (LD), the job of individualization is made much easier.

The work in the classroom should be designed to enhance the student’s strengths while building up their skills in the areas of need. In each class I have a mosaic of students who may share learning styles or have their own unique learning style. My job as a math teacher is to present the material in a way that is interesting and in a manner that best suits each student’s LD. What may work for one student with a particular LD may not work for another. The key is finding a way to make the material “click” and allow them to understand what is being taught and know how to apply it.

There is not one approach to teach a particular topic to a student. I could teach them five different ways to accomplish the same task. What I’m looking for is that one way that allows them to truly understand what is being asked of them. Occasionally one of my methods may not work and a student may come up with their own system of doing something. Sometimes their technique may be a rephrasing of what I taught them, just in their own words. Other times they may come up with a method that makes sense to them but stumps me.  At times explanations aren’t enough and a student who learns better using visuals may need to see what I’m saying. I’ve used desks to make graphs and matrices, I’ve had students use technology to illustrate and record their findings, I’ve had to explain math by making references to television shows, and I’ve even had students act out algebraic questions. Whatever allows the students to understand the material is how they will learn and retain that information.

The Bridgeway Way - Using creative approaches to understanding math

Once again, we're delighted to share some tips from our own staff on the creative ways they help students with learning disabilities learn.  Many math concepts can be especially tough, but as Mr. DeGrasse tells us, it's not impossible.

Enjoy!

Rhonda & the Bridgeway Team

My name is Michael DeGrasse and I’ve been teaching at Bridgeway Academy for 2 years. In all my time in the classroom, I have never been so inspired and amazed at the fantastic ways students can come to understand material being taught than in my math classes at Bridgeway.

One topic this year showed me that LD really does stand for ‘learning difference’ rather than ‘learning disability’. As a high school math teacher, most of the time the ideas and topics discussed in class are very abstract and un-relatable. Teaching networks and matrices to a grade 10 class may appear easy – simply teach the students how lines connect to certain spots. The topic, however, becomes increasingly difficult to a student who might have one or more Learning Differences – especially LD’s like dysgraphia or those that affect short-term memory, executive functioning, or require hands-on learning.  Any one of these LDs could make learning the topics seem impossible or improbable to the student with an LD. My challenge is to find multiple ways to teach the material so that each student can learn in their own way.

What I found most important was first finding each student’s strengths. By finding their strengths, I can build a foundation to start from and then build upon. For many of my students, the difficulty was not being able to relate to, or comprehend, the lines on the paper. As a result, I decided to make the lines of the networks tangible. I was able to transfer the points on paper into actual points in the classroom by overturning desks. I was then able to make the lines on paper come to life by using green tape to connect the desks (aka the points). I basically took a 2 dimensional picture or idea and made it 3 dimensional and real.  By doing this, the students were able to manipulate the diagram they saw on paper and walk through the problem to see it from different angles. This allowed some students to comprehend the problem in a way that they may not have been able to see before.

Once I worked out the fine details, in collaboration with the students who required the adaptation, I was able to show the entire class and demonstrate that there wasn’t just one way to look at a problem. This showed the class that with creativity and imagination any math problem can be solved in a variety of ways.  From that point on, whenever the students became stuck or confused, they took it upon themselves to come up with ways to approach the math so that it made sense to them.

Sometimes a student’s approach will only made sense and work for them personally, and sometimes a student’s approach will also work for another student who also may not have fully understood the topic.  In one recent class we had four different methods being used to solve one topic - all mathematically correct and each helping a different student in their own way.

The key is finding the student’s strength, build a foundation around it, and then adding to that foundation to create a way for them to correctly understand a topic.  If we find and build that foundation, every student can learn anything in their own way.

Bridgeway & The Khan Academy

Back on December 11, we posted a long article about the Khan Academy and how the online approach they're taking to education is revolutionizing some classrooms.  As it turns out, Khan Academy videos have made it into our own Bridgeway classrooms!  Here's a posting from one of our Math teachers on how she's using it to help students with learning disabilities.

Enjoy!

Rhonda & the Bridgeway team


By Jean Cain
Teacher, Bridgeway Academy

My name is Jean Cain and I have been a teacher at Bridgeway for the past 4 years.  All of my students have learning disabilities in different areas, such as listening, writing, reading, and math, so I have to come up with creative ways to teach the skills they need.

I use Khan Academy in my math skills class with some of my students.  A fellow teacher showed me this site last summer and I thought it would be a fun and useful additional resource my students could use.

My math classes have 6- 8 students in them at a time, and each student is working on individual lessons that cover topics or skills they need to review and practice. Students complete their work at their own pace.  I teach the initial lesson with the students often using concrete materials or manipulatives. Afterwards, those students who wish to use this website are encouraged to do so.

Students enjoy this website because it offers concise lessons that are taught step-by-step.  Salman Khan will talk out his reasoning while recording this information to solve multi-step math problems.  This is very beneficial to those students that find multi- step problem-solving challenging.   My students also like how he records information or steps using different colors.

The lessons can be paused and replayed, so the students can record the work at their own pace. Students that require more time to process material benefit greatly from this.  They’re able to create their own detailed notes that are well-organized. For my older students that find textbooks challenging for various reasons, this website allows them a more independent approach to learning.  I have seen an increase in confidence as a result.  Students can use this site at home to help with their homework, or receive additional instruction regarding a topic they’re interested in learning about.  Younger students enjoy collecting the badges and choosing which lessons they want to work on.

This site is helpful for most of my students and is definitely worth checking out.

Understanding dyscalculia

Here is a fairly recent media release from the National Institutes of Health in the US about dyscalculia, or math learning disability. Enjoy!

Rhonda 

Difficulty estimating quantity linked to math learning disability

NIH-supported study may lead to early screening test

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have discovered that the innate ability to estimate quantities is impaired in children who have a math learning disability.

The link between difficulty estimating quantities and math difficulties was seen only in children who had a math learning disability, and not in those who did poorly in math but were not considered to be learning disabled.

"The findings suggest that students may struggle with math for very different reasons," said Kathy Mann Koepke, Ph.D., director of the Mathematics and Science Cognition and Learning program at the NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), which funded the study. "Research to identify these reasons may lead to new ways of identifying those at risk, and developing the means to help them."

Math learning disability is also referred to as dyscalculia.

The study was published in Child Development and was conducted by Michèle Mazzocco, Ph.D., at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and her colleagues, Lisa Feigenson, Ph.D., and Justin Halberda, Ph.D., also at Johns Hopkins.

In earlier research, Drs. Feigenson and Halberda have shown that the innate ability to estimate and compare quantities is present in infancy and improves with age.

"People rely on this ability in daily life," Dr. Mazzocco said. "A familiar example is when people size up which line will move more quickly at the grocery store, based on their perception of the number of persons and items per line."

The researchers compared children’s ability to estimate quantity with their level of mathematics achievement.

Read the rest of the release here.