Pace, homework and learning retention.

Hi Everyone,

I have 3 concerns:

1. I used the Empower book, Over, Around and Within, over the summer.  My students loved it and told me they were enjoying Math for the first time.  I also saw some improvement in their TABE scores (particularly Applied Math), and was very pleased about that.  What surprised me was the slow pace at which my students learned.  This was an evening class of students, all with day jobs.  Their TABE scores were all in the 3-4 level, some in the M test and some in the D test.  I had a volunteer high school math teacher helping me out.  He works in an urban school, and was surprised (as well) about our students' slow pace.  I am now preparing to move into the Everyday Number Sense book, and would like to get through it by the end of October, with about 3 hours of class time/week.  I will have some of the same students, as well as others, joining. 

I am trying to balance the expectations that come with signing up for a class in a particular subject with the abilities of my particular students.  The expectations in a post-secondary setting is that you sign up for a particular class, and a certain list of topics will be covered over the span of that term.  Some students handle the pace well and learn everything.  Others need to repeat part or all of the class.  Is this the model I should be adopting, or should I be keeping a slower pace for my students.  I think most of you will advocate for the latter, but I would like to have the discussion to hear your reasoning and experiences.

2. There isn't a lot of homework to go along with these books.  I would like my students to have daily practice outside of class.  Does anyone have particular recommendation of websites that provide good supporting worksheets that I can hand out?

3. Retention: this is why I want to assign homework.  My students don't seem to retain as much as I would like them to, given that this all needs to build into the subsequent math topics.  How are any of you addressing this?

Thanks!

Sue P.

Comments

I am not familiar with that book, so I don't know how well it lends itself to going online and finding matching worksheets for practice, but mathisfun.com and http://www.math-drills.com/ (you need the hyphen) have lots of them.   

I just don't know why the folks making math stuff have to have good conceptual stuff **or** a lot of practice.   How 'bout good conceptual stuff... and then practice?   

I am having some of the same questions about pace and timing, as last Friday I connected with a person in our distance & virtual learning who wants to make a free, open course for basic math skills... which is something I've wanted to do for years.  I'm fervently, fervidly hoping that yes, in fact, a few more people recognize the potential -- but that it has to be fundamentally different from the initial "MOOC" kinds of things that are just "here's the material -- we're putting it out there, and you're on your own."   

    Will make a separate post about it...

Thanks!  I have seen those websites and do use some of the worksheets for drilling.  In fact, I have my students drill on their multiplication tables at the end of each class (using math-drills.com worksheets), then record their rate on a progress sheet.  With Everyday Number Sense, I have begun supplementing homework with other worksheets, as well.  When I saw my student struggling with combinations of 10 and 100, I had them do an in-class drill of number bonds using each number.  This illustrated the need for a better comfort and flexibility with those numbers, especially as we did it after they had been trying to add and subtract dollar amounts, mentally, beforehand.  When I realized they were struggling in counting by 3s, we did some skip-counting in class, and I wrote some of the numbers on the board so they could see that there are patterns that good skip counters learn to recognize so they don't have to memorize each individual number.  I then gave them number line worksheets that required them to skip count to fill in different numbers on the line.  It's drier stuff than the workbook exercises, but I think some amount of drilling is necessary to help them develop the skills. 

I do like the conceptual stuff offered in the Empower series, and wouldn't replace it.  What I would like to see is more opportunity for practicing it.  I'm currently working on mental math techniques, and learning that this is tricky.  One chapter works on estimating total prices of multiple items in one's head, then adjusting by either adding or subtracting the difference between the actual and rounded amount to figure out the actual price -- all in one's head.  Several of the exercises turned it into a math procedure on paper, with parentheses [ 4($5.00) - 4(.05) = $19.80 ], but my students weren't quite connecting to this, even if they could do the method in their heads. 

Also, while I agree with urging students to learn to verbalize their methods, they still leave these questions blank on the homework.  I keep repeating that the more they can verbalize what they are doing, the better they will understand it, and the better they will recognize the vocabulary of the problem -- which they will, in turn, recognize in a word problem.  We're working on it.

As for pace, I won't get through the book in one term (6-7 weeks) with my current group.  The tricky thing will be when the new term starts and I have blend the new and the old students into a whole while continuing where we left off in the book.  I am wondering if anyone else -- particularly ABE program instructors -- has contended with that.

 

Thanks, again, for your reply!

Sue P.