Ah good old multiplication. How doth I love thee. Let me multiply the ways (ha).
In all honesty, at the 4th grade level students are supposed to already have the basics of multiplication down. They should know their facts and should be more than ready for two-digit by two-digit multiplication. But let me tell you a little secret. They're not ready. When we get to multiplication in October/November my students have no clue what I'm talking about. I might as well be speaking a foreign language that's how much they can't recall their multiplication facts. And when you throw in two-digit x two-digit? Forget about it (said in my loving Italian accent)!
The way my math curriculum is set up is that it is a scripted curriculum. What is a scripted program? I'm so glad you asked. It means that I've been given a guide (7 very thick and heavy binders, one for each unit) for each and every lesson. It tells me what to say and what I should expect as a response from my students (which I have to train them to tell me). Every couple of lessons we switch strategies until your head is spinning and then after about the 10th strategy we go back to the first hoping the students remember it and ask them to start solving problems using it again. If you can't tell we use Engage NY Math.
Now there are some bonuses to Engage NY, but being that I came from a background of art to 6th grade math and science where I had CMP2 and then got to make my own curriculum materials, going to a scripted program kind of doused my love of math. And as much as when I was a kid I said I hated math, as a teacher I have LOVED teaching math. With all caps and everything.
Math is very linear. Though there are always multiple strategies you could use to get an answer there is only one correct answer and I like that about math. There isn't a ton of guess work involved to get to the answer. You complete the problem and that's that. This might explain why I like to bake so much. The precision and exactness of it all really speaks to me.
Anyway, I love math and Engage NY was killing that joy. So last fall I decided to do something about it. I created an action research plan where I, gasp, didn't use Engage NY for a lesson and taught math how I wanted to teach it. Now, don't throw stones yet! Let me explain. See, we had been working on multiplication in class for a couple weeks at this point and my students were either confused, knew it all, or their heads were spinning around on their shoulders. In a two week time span we had covered about 5 or 6 different strategies on how to multiply. That included notes, practice together, practice on their own, extra practice with me, and practice at home. I still had students who just didn't get it.
This was about the time that I was taking my research class for my master's degree. I had to come up with an action research plan that I could implement, test, and analyze the data about within 5 weeks. My students were struggling in math. Do you see where this is going? The light bulb went off and I had my action research topic. I wanted to know if I could sneak an inquiry-based lesson into a scripted curriculum and have different results than what I was getting from my students. Brilliant I tell you! So I planned.
I created math task cards that had different multiplication problems on them. Some were two-digit x one-digit, some were two-digit x two-digit. All were either homework problems my students were going to complete that night, or problems we had done together previously in class. I had 4 stations and each station had 4 problems. I had 20 students so there were 4 groups of 5. I split my students according to how they scored themselves on a pre-assessment I gave them which reflected on their multiplication prowess. Here's the survey: file:///C:/Users/nate/Desktop/Pre-Activity%20Survey.mht. If you copy and paste it, it will take you to a page that shows you what my survey looked like. Sorry I can't get the link to work! I set my groups and set up the students to start multiplying!
The goal was to have the students rotate stations every 7-10 minutes. That didn't happen. I wanted to rotate groups to work with. That didn't happen either. I ended up staying with my lowest group the entire time because I realized they had no clue how to multiply. You know the phrase, "Fake it 'til you make it?" That was this group of students. In the 20 minutes I worked with them I pulled out every trick I knew. The one that resonated the most with them was using the 10's blocks to show the numbers and multiply. Once they did that, we moved on to standard algorithm and they had it! I was just as exhausted as they were by the time the 20 minutes was up, but I was happy that they finally understood multiplication.
Now my other groups worked fairly well. There was some arguing so I had to squash that. And if they got all of the problems solved then I had them double check them using another method of multiplying to get the answer. It was when they got a different answer that they then had to really re-evaluate their work. Regardless, we learned how to multiply, and my students had fun. I taught the same lesson, but with a twist and my students liked that twist.
So what was I to do? Stay with the curriculum the way it was? Nah. I started teaching math my way about mid-year, after getting permission from my principal who had told us in a meeting to teach how we needed to teach to get our students to learn. I literally said, "Then I'm not teaching NY Math anymore," and she told me to do what I needed to do and that was fine by her. So I did. And do you know what happened? My students bloomed. They went from hating math class to loving math class and I did the same. It became fun again and my passion was re-ignited.
So what have I learned for this next year? Follow your gut instincts. Mine haven't steered me wrong and if I hadn't I probably would've been miserable right along with my students during math for the rest of the year. It also never hurts to ask. If I hadn't asked if I could change things I might not have been brave enough to go against the grain. I'm a people pleaser type of person and without having the okay I don't think I would've gone full off the rails like I did. But I'm so glad I asked and did what I loved instead of sludging through the muck.
How has action research changed your classroom environment? How have you gone against the grain and what kind of results did you get? Leave a comment and let me know!
In all honesty, at the 4th grade level students are supposed to already have the basics of multiplication down. They should know their facts and should be more than ready for two-digit by two-digit multiplication. But let me tell you a little secret. They're not ready. When we get to multiplication in October/November my students have no clue what I'm talking about. I might as well be speaking a foreign language that's how much they can't recall their multiplication facts. And when you throw in two-digit x two-digit? Forget about it (said in my loving Italian accent)!
The way my math curriculum is set up is that it is a scripted curriculum. What is a scripted program? I'm so glad you asked. It means that I've been given a guide (7 very thick and heavy binders, one for each unit) for each and every lesson. It tells me what to say and what I should expect as a response from my students (which I have to train them to tell me). Every couple of lessons we switch strategies until your head is spinning and then after about the 10th strategy we go back to the first hoping the students remember it and ask them to start solving problems using it again. If you can't tell we use Engage NY Math.
Now there are some bonuses to Engage NY, but being that I came from a background of art to 6th grade math and science where I had CMP2 and then got to make my own curriculum materials, going to a scripted program kind of doused my love of math. And as much as when I was a kid I said I hated math, as a teacher I have LOVED teaching math. With all caps and everything.
Math is very linear. Though there are always multiple strategies you could use to get an answer there is only one correct answer and I like that about math. There isn't a ton of guess work involved to get to the answer. You complete the problem and that's that. This might explain why I like to bake so much. The precision and exactness of it all really speaks to me.
Anyway, I love math and Engage NY was killing that joy. So last fall I decided to do something about it. I created an action research plan where I, gasp, didn't use Engage NY for a lesson and taught math how I wanted to teach it. Now, don't throw stones yet! Let me explain. See, we had been working on multiplication in class for a couple weeks at this point and my students were either confused, knew it all, or their heads were spinning around on their shoulders. In a two week time span we had covered about 5 or 6 different strategies on how to multiply. That included notes, practice together, practice on their own, extra practice with me, and practice at home. I still had students who just didn't get it.
This was about the time that I was taking my research class for my master's degree. I had to come up with an action research plan that I could implement, test, and analyze the data about within 5 weeks. My students were struggling in math. Do you see where this is going? The light bulb went off and I had my action research topic. I wanted to know if I could sneak an inquiry-based lesson into a scripted curriculum and have different results than what I was getting from my students. Brilliant I tell you! So I planned.
The goal was to have the students rotate stations every 7-10 minutes. That didn't happen. I wanted to rotate groups to work with. That didn't happen either. I ended up staying with my lowest group the entire time because I realized they had no clue how to multiply. You know the phrase, "Fake it 'til you make it?" That was this group of students. In the 20 minutes I worked with them I pulled out every trick I knew. The one that resonated the most with them was using the 10's blocks to show the numbers and multiply. Once they did that, we moved on to standard algorithm and they had it! I was just as exhausted as they were by the time the 20 minutes was up, but I was happy that they finally understood multiplication.
Now my other groups worked fairly well. There was some arguing so I had to squash that. And if they got all of the problems solved then I had them double check them using another method of multiplying to get the answer. It was when they got a different answer that they then had to really re-evaluate their work. Regardless, we learned how to multiply, and my students had fun. I taught the same lesson, but with a twist and my students liked that twist.
So what was I to do? Stay with the curriculum the way it was? Nah. I started teaching math my way about mid-year, after getting permission from my principal who had told us in a meeting to teach how we needed to teach to get our students to learn. I literally said, "Then I'm not teaching NY Math anymore," and she told me to do what I needed to do and that was fine by her. So I did. And do you know what happened? My students bloomed. They went from hating math class to loving math class and I did the same. It became fun again and my passion was re-ignited.
So what have I learned for this next year? Follow your gut instincts. Mine haven't steered me wrong and if I hadn't I probably would've been miserable right along with my students during math for the rest of the year. It also never hurts to ask. If I hadn't asked if I could change things I might not have been brave enough to go against the grain. I'm a people pleaser type of person and without having the okay I don't think I would've gone full off the rails like I did. But I'm so glad I asked and did what I loved instead of sludging through the muck.
How has action research changed your classroom environment? How have you gone against the grain and what kind of results did you get? Leave a comment and let me know!
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