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The second grade team felt like we were lacking consistency in instruction structure. Because of this, we found ourselves jumping around from day to day, not quite sure what we would teach next, or how much time we should spend on a particular topic. We also felt overwhelmed with the various ways we could be assessing student growth or mastery on a certain topic, and had not yet developed an efficient, time-saving way to measure growth. We decided to tackle the primary driver of Pedagogy by looking critically at the structure of our math workshop. It was becoming evident that many of our students (particularly English Language Learners) were struggling to independently access new math tasks. Dr. Nydia Flores contributes this to a lack of structure. “Students are going to be focusing on content and language simultaneously. So therefore they need to be comfortable with daily routines. If you are consistent and coherent every time you do classroom teaching, they will be able to pick up on that and remove that from their stresses [to] focus on form, content, and language in a different way” (Flores, 2017). In order to better support students in accessing these tasks, we knew a change in our math workshop structure was necessary.
The "WHY"
Previously, our math workshop was fluid, and always changing depending on our project, or the schedule of the day. It lacked consistent assessment or differentiated instructional time. In order to change this, we decided to alter our math workshop weekly structure from a fluid and flexible plan, to a consistent one that ended with a simple and concise exit card to measure student growth that week.
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This plan includes the following:
Monday: CGI
Tuesday: Direct Instruction and practice expanding on a particular student derived strategy shown on Monday
Wednesday: This is a half day, so it has remained fluid. Generally it involves a math game or activity for relevant skill practice
Thursday: Another CGI problem (same type as Monday) and an exit card
Friday: small group instruction based on exit card data
The "HOW"
The "WHY"
The "WHY"
Change idea: Second grade math workshop structure
The team discovered that a consistent structure that includes student discovery and inquiry, paired with direct practice allows students to access the content more accurately, as shown in the chart above. We hope to see similar results as we move forward with this. Below you will find student work from weeks one, two, and three, demonstrating growth. Briana is classified as an English Language Learner in second grade. Prior to our change in math workshop structure, she lacked confidence as a mathematician. She often came to the teacher prior to diving into a mathematical task, doubting her own ability and knowledge. She also wasn’t able to demonstrate various math strategies to solve, and often defaulted to trying (ineffectively) to solve the work in her head. However, as we progressed through our change cycle, Briana showed an ability to use more and more complex strategies to solve.
preliminary findings
The below chart depicts the first three weeks of exit card data with the new structure.
preliminary findings
Student work
12/15/16 Week 1: Briana tries to solve using mental math, and arrives at an incorrect answer.
1/05/17 Week 2: Briana uses a one-to-one strategy to solve. She arrives at a correct answer. It should be noted that she attempted to use place value and attempted to erase her work before trying a different strategy.
2/12/17 Week 3: Briana uses her knowledge of tens and ones to solve. She arrives at a correct answer again.