Sponsored by the Southern Illinois Professional Development Center - part of the Illinois Community College Board Service Center Network
Monday, May 6, 2019
Foundations of Special Learning Needs at UIC
Thanks for the great work from all of the educators who attended the Foundations of Special Learning Needs training at UIC last Friday! Check back on the SLN Blog to read the posts from the participants as they apply what they have learned!
My student has strong conceptual and spatial aptitudes in math, but a moderate to weak ability to accurately complete arithmetic and low level algebraic steps to finish a solution. Algebra II was assigned to her. The subject requires higher level reasoning skills, and mundane mathematical manipulation.
Recognizing this dichotomy in her ability, I tutored her with two approaches: 1)we focused on problem setup, and 2)we addressed algebraic and arithmetic skills necessary to finalize the solution. On her exams, I asked her to setup and solve all problems with explicit detail. For example, if she had to exponentiate variables, combine terms, and then add, subtract, multiply or divide, I asked her to complete each step separately. She could not skip steps.
This approach allowed me to distinguish between her understanding of ideas and basic skills to finalize solutions. Furthermore, requiring detailed completion of final steps allowed me to identify whether her weaknesses were with exponentiation, grouping of variables, cancellation of terms, addition, subtraction, division, multiplication or other basic algebraic or arithmetic techniques.
She completed Algebra II, Semester II with a solid B average.
My student has strong conceptual and spatial aptitudes in math, but a moderate to weak ability to accurately complete arithmetic and low level algebraic steps to finish a solution. Algebra II was assigned to her. The subject requires higher level reasoning skills, and mundane mathematical manipulation.
ReplyDeleteRecognizing this dichotomy in her ability, I tutored her with two approaches: 1)we focused on problem setup, and 2)we addressed algebraic and arithmetic skills necessary to finalize the solution. On her exams, I asked her to setup and solve all problems with explicit detail. For example, if she had to exponentiate variables, combine terms, and then add, subtract, multiply or divide, I asked her to complete each step separately. She could not skip steps.
This approach allowed me to distinguish between her understanding of ideas and basic skills to finalize solutions. Furthermore, requiring detailed completion of final steps allowed me to identify whether her weaknesses were with exponentiation, grouping of variables, cancellation of terms, addition, subtraction, division, multiplication or other basic algebraic or arithmetic techniques.
She completed Algebra II, Semester II with a solid B average.