Math Warm-Up as a Formative Assessment

Math for many of my students is like going to the dentist. They either love it or hate it. Sometimes it depends on the teacher and how much time they spend teaching the skill vs having time to just practice it. Many times students with disabilities need lots to time to practice the new skill and then they need to see it over and over again. I don't know about you-but mine are really good about knowing it at school and when they get home well:)  I like using a warm-up as a formative assessment and create small groups for remediation.

A couple of things that help: 1) if there is more than one way to solve it, teach it to them so they can find the one that works for them. It may not be efficient but if it gives the correct answer then why argue. I had one student who could use a more efficient strategy to answer multi-digit multiplication problems but never got the right answer. In collaborating with his math teacher and him, we decided that we wanted him to use a strategy that got him the right answer every time.

2) Provide review each and every day. I collect them a couple times a week or daily and look at them. Why?? I'm looking for specific things. I'm looking for errors. I want to know if its a basic fact error, a component skill error, or a strategy error. 

Basic facts: are the one hundred addition and multiplication  facts formed by adding or multiply any two single-digit numbers and their subtraction and division products. 

Component Skill Error: are the previously taught skills that are integrated steps in a problem solve  strategy. In lower grades its usually involves a counting or symbol identification error. In upper elementary, a much wider range of component errors. An example is this fraction problem: the student knew to convert both fractions to a common denominator but did not know the component skill of rewriting a fraction as an equivalent fraction. 

Incorrect

Correct







Strategy error occurs when the student demonstrates that he does not know the the sequence of steps needed to solve the problem. An example the student subtracts the denominator from the numerator when asked to convert an improper fraction to a mixed number.


Once I know what kind of error the students are making I can design my small groups for remediation. If a student misses problems because of basic facts errors, I work to figure out which facts specific facts they need to work on and provide practice on both accuracy and speed. 

Component errors are usually because they were not attending. I will reteach the skill that they are missing. For strategy errors, I create a high structured lesson and reteach the skill step by step. I ensure mastery at each step along the way. 







Making 10 Goldfish Math


1 comment:

  1. Online tutoring is very helpful in solving the math problems and to understand the higher section topics.It can be very helpful for beginners because it provide practice and guidance for them.So that they will not face any kind of problem in future regarding further studies.
    operation of sets

    ReplyDelete

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Welcome to my all thing special education blog. I empower busy elementary special education teachers to use best practice strategies to achieve a data and evidence driven classroom community by sharing easy to use, engaging, unique approaches to small group reading and math. Thanks for Hopping By.
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