Why I Started Focusing on Soft Skill in My Math Class, and Why You Should Too.

By Amber Delliger

Metro North ABE

@adelliger

Over the past 13 years I have worked with math students of all ages, from kindergartners, to a great grandmother working towards her GED, to veteran teachers working to improve numeracy instruction in their own classrooms. My current teaching assignment is at Anoka Ramsey Community College working on a pilot class to help improve success and retention of college students who place into developmental math courses.

I spend my week teaching beside a college instructor and a professional tutor in an accelerated beginning/intermediate algebra course we call ‘Mathematical Foundations with Elementary Algebra.’ This is a course that covers two semesters of math content condensed into one semester with required college faculty-led and Adult Basic Education (ABE)-led class sessions. With the help of my colleagues, we have developed a course that attempts to balance the traditional college lecture experience and the small group/personal learning plans of ABE.

When we started our project over a year ago, we anticipated that as the ABE support, I would be spending the majority of my time pre-teaching, re-teaching, and filling in content gaps.

While this makes up a good chunk of my instructional time, a much more pressing need has arisen.

The students we are working with do have your expected skill gaps: division, working with decimals and fractions, and navigating word problems, but these are not the only skill gaps that are holding them back.

Over the past 3 semesters, what we learned was that many of our students lack the fundamental skills that enable them to be successful independent learners in the math classroom and beyond. The students were struggling to take adequate notes, navigate their textbooks, develop effective study strategies, complete their homework assignments… the things that often spell disaster for students. It was clear that there wasn’t malintent from any of the students- they weren’t sitting in class staring blankly at us (or their cell phones) because they wanted to ‘stick it to us’, but instead, they weren’t sure when information was key, or how to record the right information to help them later when they were outside of class.

After feeling frustrated from watching students not perform to their potential, and watching them struggle with their own frustrations, we decided to lean more heavily onto purposefully incorporating soft skills instruction into our daily curriculum. Just having discussions about and reflecting on the soft skills required to be successful in college wasn’t enough. We turned to the Transitions Integration Framework identified in Minnesota’s Adult Education Academic, Career, and Employability Standards (ACES- http://atlasabe.org/resources/aces) These standards define the academic, career, and employability skills that are essential for students to successfully transition to post-secondary education, career training, the workplace, and community involvement.

Now, our daily learning targets include mathematic content and a targeted soft skill.In each lesson, we share learning targets with our students that highlight all the skills we are hoping to develop that day. We also utilize exit tickets, journalling, or other reflection activities that ask students to identify how or when they are using their skills and if it is helping them feel more successful in the classroom.

For example, it is nearing the end of the semester and students need to start thinking about creating a plan to prepare for their finals. Students were asked to pull out their calendars and syllabus turn ensure all future tests, including the final which is at a different time than our normal class, were marked down. Then, students journaled about 3 successful study strategies that they have employed during the semester. Looking at their upcoming tests and thinking about the study strategies they prefer, students wrote out a plan on how to balance studying for future tests and the final at the same time. We will be checking in with these journals later in the semester to check in on their progress and adjust their plans as necessary.

 

Study Skills We Incorporated from the Beginning:

From the beginning of the pilot, we knew basic soft skills instruction would be helpful. We had class visits from many available campus resources (TRIO, Advising, Counseling, Disability Services, Math Skills Center, etc). Our hope was to help students make face-to-face connections with the programs that would provide support not only during this course, but throughout their program. We also did mini-lessons throughout the first three weeks of school on specific study skills (note taking, studying, test anxiety, navigating the math textbook) to set the stage for long-term success. Our plan was to continue to support these skills throughout the semester through a variety of planned reflective activities.

 

Examples of Soft Skills We Added After Seeing the Deficit:

• Develop growth mindset norms for the classroom and hold everyone in the room to them (Navigating Systems)
• Discuss expectations for discussion and participation and WHY/HOW that fits into our norms (Self-Management) (Effective Communication)
• Explore attitudes about math and math autobiographies (Learning Strategies) (Critical Thinking)
• Meet representatives from targeted on campus resources to help address common exterior barriers (Navigating Systems)
• Model note taking techniques and provide targeted feedback about notes (Learning Strategies)
• Discuss and model studying strategies (Learning Strategies)
• Write about and reflect on goal setting before/during/after testing cycles (Self-Management) (Effective Communication)
• Offer opportunities to discuss mistakes (type, causes, misconceptions) (Critical Thinking) (Effective Communication)
• Support the creation of long term goals and provide resources/connections to resources to help stay on track for these goals (Self-Management)
• Practice close reading strategies using the class syllabus and mathematics text (Learning Strategies)
• Provide learning tasks that require students to use a variety of resources including digital and interpersonal (Learning Strategies) (Critical Thinking)
• Develop study groups/routines that are student driven to help transition them to other study resources (Learning Strategies) (Self-Management)
• Hold students to high standards as indicated in the syllabus (Navigating Systems) (Effective Communication)

 

What We’ve Learned So Far:

Over multiple semesters we have seen that these mini-lessons just weren’t enough to improve student habits or behaviors. A major ah-ha moment for us was a reality check about making assumptions about any student’s skill set. We found that every time we assumed a student would have a skill, it would become clear that they hadn’t mastered it yet, or they had been relatively successful without it, but in the college setting their old strategies weren’t enough. Each student comes in with varying levels of experience using soft skills in an academic setting. We are taking a page from the Universal Design handbook and decided that if a skill is worth reviewing for just a few students, it’s worth reviewing for all. This means that we recognize that we need to start from the basics and ensure that we never assume students know a study skill or how to navigate something in the college system.

 

I believe providing real-time modeling of the skills has the most dramatic impact on the likelihood a student will use a skill. One example of this comes from my time supporting the college faculty during lecture. I model how to ask questions or how to take a risk by asking questions. I feel like when students see me asking questions, the fear of talking in class isn’t as great. Another example is when I model taking notes during a lecture and we break down what I recorded, why I recorded it, what I might want to add, or things that maybe weren’t as helpful. I have started spending more time discussing how to take the notes students would want to study from and reviewing notebooks to provided targeted feedback to students to improve their personal notes. After doing ‘notebook checks’ and adding small pieces of feedback, I have notice the quality of notes has improved, along with quiz and test scores.

 

In addition to incorporating more modeling and individualized feedback on study skills, we also worked diligently to learn all student names to personally greeting and address each student. Our hope is that we are able to show that they are a valued member of our classroom community. We have found that his also helps when working to develop and maintain growth mindset norms and expectations for the classroom to foster a risk-taking environment. Another way we support risk-taking is to schedule time in the week to break down the formality of math class. We will spend a short break doing a community-building activity, discuss math via internet memes, watch a cheesy math music video on our current topic, or play a math related game. In doing this we feel like we are welcoming students where they are at as learners and as people.

 

We also feel these soft skill related activities can help peak the curiosity students may have about themselves and how they use math in their lives. By identifying and naming skills that we use inside and outside the math classroom, students are starting to see math inside and outside the math classroom! We lovingly call this recreational math in our classes, but students are now learning strategies to further their own learning, or see ways that math impacts their lives that they hadn’t seen before. By validating this curiosity, we find students are more likely to engage in productive struggle, be more flexible in their problem solving strategies, and use external resources more effectively. They are becoming more independent and self-driven learners!

 

Important Takeaways:

1. Do not assume your students will intuitively know how to function in a traditional US math classroom- even if they are recently out of a traditional school setting. Each school has its own norms and expectations, if you want the students to do something, protect the time it will take to teach them it!
2. Providing students time and resources to become more independent learners shows that you respect them as learners. It is never our only hope that students do well in our classrooms, we want them to be successful learners far beyond our walls.
3. Model, model, model. Just discussing soft skills with students isn’t enough for them to develop, practice and master the skill. Showing them how it can work in real time provides a deeper connection for the skill and is worth the instructional time to do so.
4. Provide targeted feedback. Students often communicate to me that they are doing the best they can but don’t really know if something is really effective. Giving specific and timely feedback on notes, participation, observed study habits, etc, enables students to grow more quickly than only large group lessons.

 

I want to encourage you to join me in providing more targeted instruction, modeling, and support around soft skills in the math classroom. These skills will open the door for students to see the interconnectedness of math, soft skills, and the world around them. By looking at these students more holistically, you will provide a foundation for your students to be successful in math class and beyond!