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scaffolded handout

  • One More or One Less Scaffolding

    The photo above shows a screen for a hundreds table was shared by one of my students in a Math for Children graduate course. She found it on Pinterest for use a class presentation. I love this idea and came up with some revisions I think can make it more effective. It seems to me…

  • Assessment of a Math Objective

    Assessment of a Math Objective

    List all the steps for the objective. Use this table (above) as a pretest to identify gaps. Provide instruction on the gaps. In the photo below I used color coding to show what to multiply and scaffolding to align the digits in ONES and TENS place. NOTE: I provide the problems with some steps already…

  • Interpreting Slope Intercept

    Slope is one of the most important topics covered in high school algebra yet it is one of the least understood concepts. I have two observations about this. First, slope is often introduced with the formula and not as a rate of change. Second, students intuitively understand slope as rate of change conceptually when presented…

  • Scaffolding Multi-step Math Problems

    This is the figure from Mrs. Olsen’s Sidewalk Problem from the CT CAPT test 2010 (released to public). The problem has four major steps: divide the figure into common shapes, use Pythagorean Theorem to find height of the resulting triangles, find area of these shapes and compute total cost for  pouring the asphalt for the…

  • Percent Discount Scaffolded and Concrete

    I continue to be surprised at how much of a challenge computing percent discount is for students. It’s prior knowledge. If you ask them to explain what a discount is in their own words you’ll get a response like “it makes something cost less.” The students may even have mastery of computing a percent of…

  • Combining Like Tacos (scaffolded handout)

    Here is a snippet of a scaffolded handout I use to teach students how to combine like terms. The tacos bring in prior knowledge and makes the concept more concrete. The scaffolding guides the students as to where and what to write. The full handouts are available by following the links below. I’ve included my…