Post # 40 More on Working with Older Students

The biggest bang for your instructional buck” in terms of time can be found in concentrating on core components and skills that build toward algebraic reasoning and computational/ procedural fluency with comprehension.  I am now couching some of these “big” ideas as the Super Powers of Math. 

With older students you need to shore up fluency by targeting specific facts for a period of time and using them in all work.  That said, students need to have an understanding of numeracy patterns, place value and expended form, the distributive property and fraction concepts such as the “Magic One.” 

You can work with older students on multiple levels at the same time if you provide linkages.  For example, regrouping from the whole to the part can be introduced by reviewing regrouping within whole number operations for addition and subtraction.  The student who needs to work on integers needs to see how these operations are connected to numeracy patterns.  The student who does not understand 3+4=7 will not understand why 3-7=-4.  The student who needs to understand FOIL or the box method for polynomial multiplication needs to see the connections to multi-digit arithmetic, the distributive property and expanded form. 

When I work with older students I always provide connections to lower level skills and in my summer programs for middle and high school students we see good results by reviewing those super powers.  Students continually remark that they have previously never understood fraction concepts and I find that on the post assessments, scores rise when I invest time in reviewing multiplication/division concepts and procedures and fractions.  Students who do not understand fractions will not fully understand the applications using decimals and percent.  Truly reviewing supporting concepts…not only procedures…can produce gains for the student.  It takes only a few minutes a day to shore up the foundations of math concepts but the payback is big for both students and teachers.