Dan, have you experimented in collaborative pedagogical practices? Instead of you being the sole provider of knowledge, why not (since you know your students so well) group or pair up the students so that those who know something can teach it to those who don’t.

Actually, maybe this is another thread hijack, you could build the online piece once for a district, county, state, region, or country ( depending on your tolerance for group grope) and be done with it. Then the one armed paper hangers of the world could say “Go to link help_with_factors tonight and we’ll conference tomorrow”

Put simply, we need to leverage technology to provide the tools to teachers that let them maximize quality interactions.

I second collaborative pedagogical practices as a differentiation tool.

I also second online activities to aid in remediation. I could point you to a bunch for Chemistry, but since you teach math I am a bit stumped except to say that the math teachers at my school (all two of them :)) use google >> “Geometry regents” to find whatever link it is that they are looking for at the time. And I do not teach in New York.

For me, I use slideshare, create presentations and then narrate them, in much the way that you narrated a presentation for your sub the day you were absent. I further include instructions to my students to pause the show and attempt the problem and then work with me to check how they did. I don’t have much up yet (more of it is in google videos, but I’m migrating it to Slideshare) but here is an example of what I am talking about.

I do not use powerpoints in the classroom, normally.

Does anyone already have an effective algorithm for matching and then re-matching?

I have three practice problems that I have students do on their own. Not guided practice, which comes after modeling but truly independent practice. And I make them HARD.

I set the students loose on them. And when someone thinks that they’ve got all three, they get to show me their answers. Right or wrong, we have a verbal conference about why they used the approach that they used. If it turns out to be an “oops” with regard to the way they punched numbers into the calculator, I point that out. If it is due to misunderstanding, I try to guide them in the right direction.

If they get the right answer, I call out to the class as a whole, “Bernard had achieved expert level on the concept of Combinatorics! His brain is now yours to pick. Put it to work for you.” Hands start to raise all over the classroom for folks who wish to pick Bernard’s brain. Not only do they have the self-awareness that they could use extra help, but they are also aware enough to know that they need to hear another voice/perspective/take on the material or skill.

Of course, all of this would be worthless without my first week of class where I review data with them that shows that peer teaching (aka collaborative pedagogical practices) is an efficient means of studying. I then do a lesson on efficiency (same output but less time, greater output if same time) to show them how this is ideal. Then I ask who wants to put in more hours for lesser learning. No hands, usually.

Then we also have a heart-to-heart discussion about the benefits of learning from a variety of sources and how each other are a variety of sources.

I know how to set up this classroom culture where students are their own advocates for these pairings, and the L3s (what my district calls those who learn most quickly) want to have their brains picked and take responsibility for helping their classmates understand the material. And this was my first year using it and it was a huge success. I just need to spend my summer reflecting on it to be able to identify the specific concrete steps involved.

But I hope what I’ve given you is helpful. If it isn’t, feel free to pick my brain (I made a funny :) based on my previous typings) at the email address provided.

thinks “collaborative pedagogical practices” is a terribly clunky name.

TheInfamousJ has a pretty nice approach to connecting pupils for peer teaching.

Other methods are the Jigsaw method (just google for it), which is an excellent group work method for dealing with freeloaders who usually don’t participate in the work very much.

The Progressive Inquiry method is another method, which focuses on knowledge building in small groups. It’s especially suited for situations when the goal is to gain deep understanding of the subject area, and not so well for rote learning.

There are some other methods as well listed in LeMill for collaboration: http://lemill.net/methods/language?tag=collaboration&language=en
– feel free to add your own descriptions into LeMill, or improve the existing ones.

That sounds like an awesome setup in your classroom. How do you get the students to teach each other rather than tell one another the answer?

It helps to watch them like a hawk in the beginning of the year. In general, it is the same students who are quick on the uptake of the material so once you get them on the right track, they’ll stay there. And those who become my peer teachers later on in the year (I’ve had a surprising handful of those in each class) will usually peer tutor as others had been doing.

So I watch them, I go with them to their new groupings, I listen in. And when I hear them just giving away the answer I stop the session. I remind all at the table that the goal here is for everyone to have the “Feeling of Win” (I picked up a bit of their video game terminology but it seems to work) that comes with learning a concept and that being handed the answer actually results in a “Feeling of Lose”. And on top of that, I point out to my peer teachers that they, themselves, are being cheated. “Didn’t you struggle with this concept and have to think your way through it?” I’ll ask, “And then you are just going to give it away for free? Even I am not that generous.”

On top of that, I model what I’d like them to do. I never answer questions directly. One of my biggest pet peeves when I taught at the university level was how often a student would cleverly reword, “Please give me the answer?” I learned that somewhat evasive helpful hints, would answer a concern without reinforcing the student’s ability to game the system.

I usually answer questions with questions. Or I give “hints”. And if I’m asked a question from a struggling student my first question is, “Please take me through your thought process so that I can see where you are coming from.” “Why did you do [x]?” “Are you sure?” “Are you sure that you are using all the clues from the problem to craft your game plan, here?” “I’ll give you a hint, there is a very important word in the problem statement itself that you are ignoring.”

My students seem to parrot that behavior. We teach as we are taught, no?

I agree with Jason. There are some people who are motivated to learn a concept when it becomes apparent to them that the norm in the group is that you know that concept. You are always open to helping them and in your case (and mine) assessing them again on the old more baseline topic. When they look around and see that everyone else is just using the new skill from the last unit, they start to use the skill. In fact often this learner in my classroom has been very resourceful about getting themselves the help they need to become proficient. In some sense you are providing motivation by moving on.