Modify Instruction, Students do Better

August 20, 2008 by dave

I thought this Tennessean article was very interesting. Frequently, we look for a silver bullet in public education. We want a single curricular program, textbook, or professional development program that will boost student achievement without the need to make any other changes. This district raised proficiency scores in math by 11 points doing something simple:

Martin attributed the progress to a fundamental change in how teachers delivered classroom instruction last year.

"Instead of having the prescribed 'this is what we're going to do today and tomorrow,' we look at where our students are and pull them up," she said.

"Before, instruction didn't take into account where the students were at any given time. … We just didn't have a systematic way of being student centered, of addressing students more individually."

Math teachers underwent professional training to learn the new approach, which incorporated frequent testing to track student progress. Teachers also relied on classroom discussions and presentations to see if their students grasped the material.

For example, if students solved quadratic equations, they were sometimes asked to explain their thinking process behind deriving the answer. That way, teachers could check if their pupils understood the concept and could apply it correctly.

At another school, they had even better results:

At Stratford High School in East Nashville, the proficiency levels in math skyrocketed, said Cynthia Hicks-McCall, school's math specialist. Last year, 91 percent of students tested at least proficient on the Gateway math test, compared with 55 percent the year before, she said.

"We all taught the same information from day to day and then tested all our math kids every three weeks on the same benchmarks," Hicks-McCall said.

"When we found shortcomings, we went back and taught it again. We pulled kids for tutoring. I just break it down to little pieces of math and show (students) what they mean so they can remember. I'm also big on homework to keep them on their toes."

Hicks-McCall said she came up with this teaching approach of breaking down concepts into smaller chunks after teaching students with special needs. She said they responded well, so she rolled out the technique to the entire school.

So these schools found that if they modify their instruction to meet student's individual needs and remediate when they didn't get the concepts, they had higher percentages of students reaching grade-level. There's nothing Earth-shattering here. This is just good teaching practice. More schools need to be doing it, more often.

Permalink