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to have a real tough time figuring out how to pace the lesson
while also meeting the needs of all their students. I am finding In a nutshell:
teachers struggle in this regard with Eureka Math far more than Proper pacing
they did with the pre-Common Core textbook. I don't see this
of lesson
as a knock against Eureka Math. If anything, it merely speaks
to the cruddy quality of the old textbooks and that the old components..
textbooks were nothing but snake oil, convincing us we were
Keep the
doing a good job, when in reality we weren't.
Concept Development
Recently, I received an email that is very typical of teachers to a minimum.
new to Eureka Math. Here is the email and my response. I
Split the class
hope it helps someone else out there in Internet-land.
into workshop mode.
----------The original email----------
Have
-----------My response--------------
Hi there!
Your email is a common one that I get weekly from teachers inside and out of my district! Essentially,
you are asking two things:
1. How to meet the needs of ALL students?
2. How to fit all the components of a lesson into a single 45 minutes math time?
In general, I see teachers move through the components of a lesson too slowly. This is because
teachers LOVE their students and do not want to move too fast for the struggling students in the class.
Unfortunately, this means a fluency activity that should take only 3 minutes ends up taking 10 minutes.
Or an Application problem that should take 8 minutes ends up taking 20 minutes because the teacher
turned what should merely be a short formative assessment opportunity into a full-on teaching moment.
Finally, the teachers often trudge through too much of the Concept Development, doing too many
examples at too slow a pace. Or worse, the teacher skips the Concept Development altogether and just
works with the whole class in completing the Problem Set questions.
Here is a blog post I wrote a little while ago that goes more into specifics about how to pace an
individual lesson...
http://embarc.online/mod/page/view.php?id=3070
With proper pacing, much of #1 is addressed automatically. Counterintuitively, the proper pacing is
probably faster than what teachers typically do.
Now to address #1 a bit more...Let's assume the teacher has kept a zippy pace with the fluency
activity and the application problem. Now she is ready to do the Concept Development. This is where I
suggest teachers resist the urge to "over teach". The teacher should choose the minimum number of
example problems from the Concept Development vignette in the teacher edition and then release most
of the students to independently work on the Problem Set, while she immediately works with a few
students in a small group setting.
Of course, this means the teacher is now doing double duty: 1.) continuing to teach the strugglers in the
small group and 2.) monitor the rest of the class to ensure they are working productively. This is hard,
but can definitely be done.
Keep in mind that the Problem Set is a time-based activity rather than a product-based activity. This
means students are working on the Problem Set for a fixed amount of time (about 10 or 15 minutes)
regardless of whether they finish all the problems. Indeed, the teacher should identify the problems in
the Problem Set as "Must Do", "Could Do", or "Extension". During the 15 minutes, students should first
do the Must Do questions, then the Extension Questions. Time permitting, the Could Do questions are
last.
As students complete the Problem Set, I encourage teachers incorporate some sort of problem-solving
opportunity for students to work on. Some awesome online resources:
● http://www.matific.com
● http://www.openmiddle.com
● http://nrich.maths.org
These allow students to work on something OTHER than drill-and-kill math. Of course, the teacher can
certainly use other problem-solving activities she may already have.
Once the teacher finishes working with the strugglers in the small group, often there is no time for those
students to work on the Problem Set. This is okay. Just move on and have the students skip the
Problem Set that day.
The important thing is for the teacher to resist the urge to reteach the entire lesson the next day simply
because a few students do not understand today's lesson. The curriculum is specifically written to spiral
and review, which makes reteaching rarely necessary.
So...let's boil this whole thing into a simple game plan for teaching:
1. Properly pace the fluency activity and Application problem. Keep it zippy. Assess student
understanding, but don't turn it into a teaching moment.
2. Keep the Concept Development to a minimum. Do as few examples as possible in order to
release most students as quickly as possible. I call this "UNDER teach" the math...meaning the
teacher should send students to work independently a little earlier than she might otherwise
have done.
3. The teacher now does double duty: reteach a small group while also monitoring the rest of the
class.
4. Have additional problem-solving activities (online or paper-and-pencil) for early finishers of the
Problem Set.
5. Limit the Problem Set time to 10 or 15 minutes only. Then do a short Debrief conversation with
the whole class.
Sheesh...there is more we could talk about. Specifically, Universal Design for Learning (UDL). This is a
framework for how a teacher can design/modify a lesson in order to meet the needs of more students
within the lesson, thereby reducing the need to differentiate for the high- and low-students after the
lesson. In UDL, teachers proactively plan strategies for removing barriers to student learning in three
ways:
● Strategies for engagement
● Strategies for representation
● Strategies for expression.
I hope this gets you started on your journey. Please feel free to email again. We all need to support one
another as we help our teachers implement Eureka Math!
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