Exactly What is the Point of My Student Supports?

Introduction: To mindfully consider the needs of students requires teachers to move beyond simply rolling out one size fits all lesson plans. Rather, education professionals must carefully consider the individualized needs that each student bring to the classroom environment. Providing differentiated and scaffolded supports should require the educator to consider deeply, long held paradigms, and examine practices which on the surface may seem to serve student needs. Yet, often times upon further examination classroom practices may fail to address the true short and long term needs presented by students in need of individualized supports.

Over time just such considerations have confronted me in my classroom. One point in particular relates to the use of various supports for my 4th grade math students as the wrestle with both mastery of fact tables as well as the range of subject matter that 4th grade curriculum presents. One one hand, automaticity of math facts is an essential skills that is foundational to success in future math classes. Yet, such mastery can elude some students for a variety of reasons (including those with reading challenges.) On the other hand my students must also engage in skills development which often rests upon accurate and reasonably quick recall of these same math facts. For years I drilled my students on their math facts, and then turned around and required them to take on daily math activities working without the benefit of fact mastery. Academically speaking I was asking them to work without a net. The results often were deeply frustrated students, who either took exceedingly long amounts of time to work through daily lesson problems, or arrived at wrong answers not knowing if this was because they missed something in a formula or algorithm, or if they simply miscalculated. In either case students often fell further behind their classmates who had attained fact mastery, or simply saw their struggles as further evidence that they would never ‘get’ math.

Finally, after much soul searching I decided to make a radical change in my practices. First, I continued an emphasis on the need and practice towards mastery of math facts. At the same time I decided to provide needed differentiated supports such as calculators and multiplication tables based upon student need and driven by student choice. In doing so I addressed a variety of issues which every educator should consider related to the topic of differentiation and scaffolding to meet student needs.

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Things to Consider:

Consider the goal(s) of the lesson and keep them in mind: What exactly is the end goal of the lesson? In my case was it fact mastery, or working towards mastery of a math skill set? These are two completely different, although mutually depended issues (Larkin, M. J., 2001)?

Work with students to obtain buy in and set expectations, etc.: Each year I fully explain the reasons and reasoning behind with my class about the use of fact tables and calculators at very specific times in the course of our daily work. I never let students (or myself) lose sight of what it is we are trying to accomplish. We engage with each area of our math curriculum (fact mastery and skill mastery) with a clear, systematic approach (Larkin, M. J., 2001).

Establish the needs of the learner and provide student specific supports and when to apply them: The educator must know the issue(s) each student is addressing and how they are best supported. I also ask my students to participate in this process as they make wise choices for themselves with both long term and short term goals in mind. Needless to say supports will change over time as progress is made, or other points of need arise. Flexibility and adaptability are essential (Larkin, M. J., 2001).

Provide conditions for effective, ongoing feedback: Work closely with students, other educators, and support staff to monitor, assess, and provide ongoing feedback designed to best support students differentiated and scaffolded support needs as they arise or change (Larkin, M. J., 2001).

Carefully monitor and temper frustration and risk: Students in need of learning supports are often primed for failure, expecting to once again be frustrated and defeated by skills and curriculum beyond their abilities. One of the key benefits of differentiation and scaffolding is to change the hearts and minds of learners by providing relief from frustration and defeat, as well experiencing much need victories. Confidence is a powerful agent of change and it may be the single most powerful gift a teacher can give to her or his student(s) (Larkin, M. J., 2001).

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Conclusion: As it turned out, the changes to my classroom were dramatic. Although I still have students who struggle with fact mastery and automaticity, I have greatly reduced the stress level and dread often associated with skills development. No longer are students fighting a battle on two fronts, rather they can work towards skills development with greater speed and accuracy than they could have without the supports. In the end the real questions for me were as follows. 1) What exactly am I aiming for in each lesson in terms of learning goals? 2) How am I impacting student confidence and growth. Continuing the cycle of defeat for these students is the very last thing that they need. 3) What ultimately speaks to the short term and long term well being of my students? In twenty years is it more important that they understand and can apply foundational math skills and concepts (often with the aid of technology to take care of calculations and computations), or is it to fight an often losing battle to memorize the product of seven times six?

Reference

Larkin, M. J. (2001). Providing support for student independence through scaffolded  Instruction. Teaching Exceptional Children, 34(1), 30.