Building a Thinking Classroom Together: January

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From Bethany, 

“I have tried Check Your Understanding Questions, but NONE of my students are doing them. How do you get your students to work on the problems?”

This part of BTC is one of the toughest parts, in my opinion. It is tough for both students and teachers. 

Let’s start with teachers. The idea of homework has been ingrained in us since we were students ourselves. As teachers, we have seen the benefit of students doing homework. When we work with students or grade their tests, we can tell if they have worked on homework. But now Peter’s research is saying that we should leave it up to the students to decide if they should do “homework”. And let’s be real, most teenagers and children are not going to choose to do homework if they don’t have to. So we struggle with this part as teachers. As the adults and mentors in their lives, we know that doing the work will help, so we want to find ways to get them to do it. But we are not supposed to attach a payment, a.k.a. grade, to doing the work. We aren’t even supposed to look to see if they are doing the work. This, however, does not mean that we don’t mentor them in this aspect of being a mathematics student. There is a lot of work that goes into this part for us. I will get into more detail later.

Now, let’s talk about the student’s side of it. Students are humans, teenage humans. Which translates to taking any opportunity to not do work. At least this is my experience with my children who turned into teenagers. So now they are in a classroom where the teacher doesn’t grade the homework, doesn’t collect the homework, and doesn’t even look to see if they did the homework. This is a great opportunity to not do homework! They also are working at boards in groups and feel like they understand what they are doing, so they rationalize that they don’t NEED to do the problems the teacher assigns for “check your understanding”. 

So what is the solution? 

The overall answer to this is that we need to TEACH them how and when to do “check your understanding” problems (I call them CYU problems). Here is how I do it.

  1. I give a daily “Understanding Check” at the beginning of each class. This is just one or two questions that I use to collect data on their progress tracking (Chapter 13). The questions might be from the day before or from the week before. This tells me how the class is doing but it also tells THEM how they are doing.
  2. After a daily Understanding Check, I go over the problem(s) with the class. I like that I get a chance to reteach it, (it becomes a chance for some interleaving that I have been looking into lately). And then we talk about what to do if a student didn’t do well on it. I remind them that they have CYU problems they can work on to practice the type of problem we just did. 
  3. I find the daily Understanding Checks to be a great reality check. I talk to my students all the time about the “false-sense of understanding” that naturally happens when they work in groups or watch someone else do the math. They need to practice independently. The Understanding Checks help point out that they might not know how to do something on their own and they need to work on it. 
  4. Model, model, model. Every time my students take a pretest, I bring up (project on the smartboard) the toolkit I put together for them that shows the breakdown of the test in table format (chapter 13), where they can find related problems for each part of the table, and how to mark how they did on the pretest and previous Understanding Checks. I demonstrate a fake example and how I would analyze my pretest, find CYU problems, find the other resources provided, and how to prepare for the test. I walk through the whole process as if I was the student so that they actually see and feel what studying math is. (Let’s be honest, for some, this is the first time they are working on the CYU problems for the unit) But, when these students work on the CYU problems, they are doing it for the right reasons, so I count it as a win.
  5. After a unit test, I always make my students look at their progress tracking table and see which parts they need to improve. They have to highlight the areas they want to improve and look at what CYU problems will help. 

Doing all of this doesn’t mean that students will now start doing the CYU problems when I assign them. But it does mean they will more than likely do them at some point, which is better than the alternative of copying, cheating, or getting help without understanding. I also remind myself that if students are doing well on the daily Understanding Checks and the Unit test, then do they need to do more problems? It is hard to let go, but if my students are learning and retaining, then they are doing what they need to do. Ultimately, most students will not naturally choose to do the CYU problems, you need to teach them how and when they should do them. Teach them how to be independent learners and build autonomy. 

***I am looking for more topics and questions to discuss. If you have a question about the Thinking Classroom, or if you have a story or success that you would like to share, please send me your question in this google form.

Until next time, keep on building! Together we will build a generation of thinkers.

Jessica Strom
Win-E-Mac School
MCTM High School Vice-President