Mrs. Greene’s class has been working on long division, and like many classrooms around the country, almost half of the students are not getting it, and about to be left behind.
The Issue
The problem is that a handful of students don’t understand place values and continue to make errors in the placement of the quotient.
A few more students can’t do double digit subtraction, and thus keep getting the wrong remainder.
Finally, several students in the class don’t know their times tables, thus they can’t get the right quotient atop the division bracket, nor do they get the right answer below the dividend.
Each student cannot do the work, but for different reasons. And until each student’s individual need is met, he/she will NOT be able to master long division.
How can she serve all her students at the same time?
How can Mr. Green, a Pre-Algebra teacher, help his class with two step equations when many students are struggling with different skills in the process? Some can’t add and subtract integers, other can’t multiply or divide them, and several more don’t understand one step equations?
Whatever skill your math students are working on, with few exceptions, there are a series of skills needed to solve it; just like the examples above.
The Solution – Differentiation Stations
To serve all your students, simultaneously, we recommend remediation stations – an independent station to RETEACH each skill necessary in the standard you are trying to accomplish. All stations are run at the same time, thus reaching each student where they are, with the appropriate level of support and practice.
What follows will be a short series that will teach you “How to Create Learning Stations.”
Step 1 – The Outline
The first step in creating a remediation station is to think about all the prerequisite skills needed for the task your students are currently working on.
For example: if your students are working on graphing systems of equations, they need to understand the following:
- Plotting and reading points on a coordinate plane
- Graphing slope (and writing the slope of a line)
- Plotting the y-intercept
- Graphing a line in y=mx+b format
- Graphing lines in standard form
What about the standard you are working on? What prerequisite skills are required to perform its task?
List them out in order. We will be building a station for EACH skill to help our students become proficient at the grade level standard.
Finally, I’d love for you to share your list on our Facebook page.
And make sure to subscribe to the blog to receive an email notification about step 2 – coming soon.
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Free Tutorial Video on How to Implement Learning Stations
