I’d like to invite you on a journey with me…
One that will help you reach every student in the room, regardless of their level or their needs.
One that will help you differentiate your instruction so that each student is challenged at the appropriate level and making measurable gains.
Along this journey, we will discuss tips, strategies, and techniques to help you get real growth from every student in the room, and celebrate each one for the success that they make.
This journey will be a series of 10 emails over 10 days, each exploring a different reason that we, as math teachers, don’t reach our students, and discover different strategies to help us overcome each of these obstacles.
Take the Journey
At the end of this journey you will be able to:
- Differentiate your instruction so that every student in the room is being reached at their level
- Celebrate student success in a meaningful and impactful way that encourages students to want to grow more
- Use data to drive instruction
- Remediate students effectively to make them successful
- Impact every student in the room
IMAGINE:
Imagine if every student in your class was being engaged with the curriculum at the appropriate level, and each student was making progress and growing. Not only were they growing, but they could see their growth, and were being celebrated for it.
In this classroom, students wouldn’t feel like failures, because they could see and feel their success.
There would be fewer and fewer classroom management issues because students were being challenged at the appropriate level and motivated to succeed with short-term accomplishments and rewards.
How much would you enjoy teaching in this type of environment?
How much would your students enjoy learning?
When you differentiate your instruction appropriately, your class will transform into a room that looks like the one I described above. I know it, because I’ve done it, and my students’ results were phenomenal.
NO MORE FACTORY LINE TEACHING
Think about an assembly line. All pieces go into the machine at the same place, are given the same treatments for the same amount of time, and then exit the assembly line looking the same. Those that do not, are labeled as malfunctions and discarded.
This is exactly what’s happening in our classrooms across the country and around the world.
Students are lumped together, not based on their ability but on their age. They are all taught the same lesson, with the same amount of practice problems for the same amount of time, and then all are progressed onto the next skill regardless of whether or not they have mastered the previous one.
Often, math skills build upon each other. So when a student doesn’t learn the first skill he/she can’t do the second. But the class has moved on, and he/she won’t be remediated, thus he/she will never succeed.
Instead, treat your classes like a ladder factory. Where every student is taking steps, making progress, getting to the top where they can ultimately do the grade level work. Every step is an accomplishment, so every step is celebrated.
This journey will equip you with the tools and the knowledge you need to make that happen in your room.
Over the next 10 emails, we will explore a different topic that hinders our math efficacy, and discover solutions together. You will also receive a free resource in each email to help you along this journey.
At the end of this journey, there will be opportunities to explore the topics deeper, and continue our quest. But for now, I invite you to…
