Number Sense
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The I in Instruction can be the same I in IEP and IDEA.
I am consistently surprised by the reliance on canned items for students who struggle. There are different reasons students struggle but we know that there are secondary characteristics and factors that inhibit effective information processing that can be addressed with some Individualization. In a math intervention graduate course I teach at the University of Saint Joseph,…
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More Than: Concept and Symbol
The alligator eats the bigger number is the common approach for student to use inequality symbols (< > < > ). I find that students remember the sentence but many do not retain the concept or use the symbols correctly, even in high school. This post presents an alternative approach. Alligator Method The reason, I believe, is…
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Opportunities for Parents to Engage Students with Math
Math is often considered an esoteric set of information that is disjointed from the reality people face, aside perhaps from money. Sadly, in school, especially in older grade levels, math is indeed presented this way. A situation as simple as riding an elevator provides opportunities to show and engage a student with math applied in…
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Authentic Activities – Money and Prices
Below is a photo of a typical worksheet for money. I worked with a parent of a high school student severely impacted by autism and she explained that her son worked on nothing but worksheets when he worked on math. For students with more severe disabilities the worksheet may not be real or meaningful as…
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Trick for subtracting integers
I have algebra students, in high school and college, who struggle with evaluating expressions like 2 – 5. This is a ubiquitous problem. I have tried several strategies and the one that is easily the most effective is shown below. When a student is stuck on 2 – 5 the following routine plays out like…
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1 to 1 Correspondence Scaffolded
I have encountered several students who struggle with 1 to 1 correspondence with the educators struggling to figure out how to teach this to these students who continue to struggle. This post reveals an approach I used with a student. I broke down the task using a formal task analysis approach. This approach involves identifying…