Math intervention isn’t something that we necessarily talk a lot about in our schools. We want students to be better at math, but beyond that we often stick to a lot of traditional methods and pedagogy. I love math intervention and I’ve seen so many students have so much success and growth. There are many things you can do to make sure that you math intervention is well thought out, productive, and engaging. In this post I’ll share with you 7 tips to help maximize your math intervention time and how you can grab a free download for each of the tips.
I’ve seen all sorts of teachers be assigned to be math interventionists. Some of the teachers have training in math and/or intervention, and some don’t. No matter if you’re a special education teacher, math teacher, Title I math interventionist (like me), or a social studies teacher who has gotten thrown into math interventions, I have some tips for you.
Keep in mind that not all of the tips will work for all situations, but a math intervention class that doesn’t have a system or an intentionally designed culture can turn into a group of disgruntled people, teachers and students included. These strategies and tips have helped students in my classroom gain confidence and have cultivated a postive culture where math learning happens.
7 Tips for Engaging Math Intervention
Be sure to grab this amazing download of 7 Tips and Resources for Math Intervention. This download will help your math intervention students show their progress, reflect on their learning, and stay engaged in learning math. Just click here & download these 7 tips & resources to help make your math intervention run a little more smoothly.
Tip # 1 Students will identify and correct errors
Last year I started having students explain why they made the mistake they made. Most of the time they thought that they had simply made a typo or careless mistake. They had a hard time putting into words what mistake they had really made. To help improve their responses I decided to make a chart that can help them put their mistakes into words.
When students are analyzing their mistakes or the mistakes of others, they now refer to this chart. It’s something that should be handy for them to reference. It could be in their binder, notebook, or taped down on the tables where they sit.
When you download this resource, you’ll see I’ve also included a chart with specific examples for adding and subtracting integers. This is very helpful in helping students identify why they made and mistake. There’s also a blank chart like this for you to model this process with your students with any topic.
Once students know what errors they’re making, the next step is getting them to not keep the same mistake over and over.
In my intervention units, students take a daily quiz. Then, they go through this process of evaluating their mistakes with each question that they do wrong. Over time they correct their mistakes before they make them. This process helps students learn not just how to do math, but how to learn from their mistakes overall.
Tip # 2 Students will participate in class games.
Very few things engage students more than playing a game. If you find the right games you can get even the most reluctant or obstinate student to participate. You might be thinking that you’re not a game person or that you don’t have enough time to waste it on games. I’d suggest to you that your students will do so much more math if they’re engaged in a game.
Some of my favorite games are The Target Game, Bingo, Jeopardy, Knockout, Football, Kahoot, or Grudge Match. I switch up between these games throughout the year, and the students are eager to play every time I tell them we’re playing a game today. I find that you don’t have to do a lot of convincing.
There’s a few rules to keep in mind when playing math games in class. The first, and biggest rule is that every student needs to be participating at all times. I don’t play a lot of games where students work in teams to solve problems because that usually means one or two kids do the work and everyone else just sits around. Instead, all students respond to all qustions and keep track of their own points. Second, you don’t have to have crazy prizes to motivate students. They enjoy playing games, and it’s a fun bonus if you award a small token prize at the end like a Jolly Rancher or a sticker.
Student accountability during games
Finally, another important part of playing games as a class is the individual accountability. Two strategies that I use to see all students’ work are personal whiteboards (or dry erase sleeves) and game scorecards. In both cases students have to write down work and show their answers. Whiteboards are my preferred method because I can see what everyone is doing at all time. I count down and everyone has to show their boards. This quick check makes the game a great formative assessment.
The game scorecard is the same thing, but it records students’ work on paper to be collected at the end of the game. For example, if we’re playing bingo with a scorecard, then students have to show me not just the answers, but the work they did to get those answers on their follow along sheet.
Game will get you a ton of buy-in and you’ll see more engagement from kids who don’t think they are good at math than you have every seen before. My recommendation is to play a whole class game in an intervention class 2 to 3 times per week.
Tip # 3 Students will use quick formative assessments daily
There are so many ways to quickly assess students. In a math intervention class you should be assessing almost constantly. You have to plan these quick dip sticks, as my friend calls them. If you don’t plan for them it’s easy to forget to do them.
This printable is two sided and gives you instant access to some formative assessment strategies. It can be used with any question type and quickly gives you a clear picture of where students are.
The first side gives easy ways for students to respond without writing anything down.
The four corners have A, B, C, D to be used as multiple choice answers. You present students with a multiple-choice question and they each show the corner with the answer they think is correct.
Also, there’s a true and false side. You can ask any true/false question and students simply show the one they think is correct. This is so quick and easy.
There’s also a thumbs up and thumbs down. If you want to know students’ confidence level on a concept quickly, then have them display a thumbs up or thumbs down. You could have them use their actual thumbs, but some kids don’t want everyone to see their feelings and they’re a little more willing to participate when the thumbs up and thumbs are on paper.
In addition, there’s a space in the middle where students can show their work, write answers, or justify their choice. This final space allows you to use this page over and over with any type of math problems, including number and word-based responses.
Pro tips when using this response page: 1) Make sure that you have all students show their boards! This is a non-negotiable. You should demand 100% participation with this activity. 2) Also, you can quickly use this page over and over again with a dry erase sleeve or by laminating it and placing at students’ tables/desks.
I put this sentence starters page on the back of the student response cards. This way, when students show their answers, they see some sentence starters. When you can ask follow-up questions, students can use the sentence starters to help them form their responses to discuss with a partner or the whole class.
Tip # 4 Students will reflect on their learning every day
It’s very easy to run out of time during class and push off student reflection. But, reflection is the opportunity that students have to make meaning of their learning for the day. They can identifying success and areas where they are confused. It’s so powerful and important. Don’t let reflection get put on the back burner. Make a habit of student reflection and set aside some time during the lesson or at the end of the hour for students to reflect.
When I first started using reflection I was afraid students wouldn’t do it. On the contrary, I find that they are usually very dilligent and thoughtful in their reflections, especially once they see how much you value their perspective. You don’t have to do reflection the same way each day either. There are a variety and tools out there for good reflection practices.
One of the reflection exit tickets I like is this emoji exit ticket. It’s easy for kids to understand, and they get to use an emoji! They understand emojis and they can relate better to them than just saying to rate something on a scale of 1 to 5.
Emoji Exit Ticket
This emoji exit ticket works perfectly at the end of the hour or the end of lesson. Students have to fill-in the topic they’re studying, identify their confidence level by shading in an emoji, and write a sentence about their understanding.
At first you have to walk students through how to identify their confidence level. When they see that you aren’t going to call them out and they trust you, they usually become very forth-coming and tell you the truth about what they understand and, more importantly, what they don’t.
The I can statement at the end gives students a chance to justify their emoji choice. They have the choice to make an “I can” statement if they are confident or a “I’m not sure about…, yet.” statement. It’s important to make sure they put the “yet” at the end. It’s a powerful word because it means there is still time to improve on this concept or skill.
I collect these emoji exit tickets and read them to get an overview of how things are going with the topic. This information makes a great way to start our lesson the next day.
Tip # 5 Students will track their own progress
Tracking progress is a great way to get students involved in their learning. I find that often they don’t know how to evaluate their performance or progress and you have to teach them how to do it. One way to teach them this skill is through progress tracking.
I like to have students track their progress on a daily basis. We have a daily quiz and they keep track of that to see how they are doing over time.
Also, I like them to keep track of their district mandated progress monitoring (we use the STAR math test). They take the test every two weeks and I have them record their progress in their binder. I am careful to model the growth mindset when we talk about their results. We don’t label ourselves with absolute terms like “smart” or “dumb”. Students often want to do that when they get tests results, so I work hard to be preemptive on that front. Instead we talk about where we are today and what our next steps toward improvement are. We talk about how each test is a snapshot and we’re looking for overall improvement and growth over the year. Finally, we talk about how we can learn from our mistakes and struggles to get better.
I’ve included a quarterly progress tracking sheet in this download and a blank one. It’s simple to make your own as well. You just have to tailor it to the programs you are using and the data you want your students to track and understand.
Tip # 6 Students will follow class culture expectations
I find that establishing a positive class culture is paramount when it comes to math intervention. Many of the students (sometimes all of the students!) in the class have very negative views of math and their math ability. Some of them will let the whole class know how they feel about math every day. There are things that you can do to help establish and maintain an enivornment of support and growth mindset.
One thing to keep in mind is that students need to know the expectations and see them on a daily basis. You have to change their schema, so that they can be successful in your class. This takes thoughtful, consistent work as a teacher. You have to model the way you want them to talk about math and about their own abilities. You have to be an example of learning from mistakes and how to work toward improvement. And you have to be vigilant about reframing negative and limiting beliefs.
Class culture stamp-sheet
This stamp-sheet serves as away to gamify and reinforce the behavior you want to see from students in a math intervention class. I’ve written 8 behaviors that I want to see students exhibit and left one space for them to write their own behavior goal for the week. You can play this like tic tac toe or have a prize when students complete the whole thing.
I would start over each week and only allow up to 3 stamps per day. You can stamp students as you see them exhibiting the behavior, have them tell you when they did something, or have others identify when someone does one of these things.
My prizes are usually simple things like Jolly Ranchers, a small bag of chips, pop culture decals (vinyl stickers are so popular), bathroom passes, ipad time pass, be the teacher for 5 minutes, etc.
I use this in intervention classes because my classes are small and there are usually a few students who need a significant amount of support with their behavior.
Tip # 7 Students will talk about math with their partner
Most students don’t just start up a conversation about math with the person sitting next to them. I’m not sure that I use any method more often than working with a partner. To get them most out of this strategy, you have to show students how to work with a partner and then give them opportunities to do it.
If you just say, “Work with your partner,” then one kid will do the work and the other will copy. I find it helps to give students support like sentence starters and graphic organizers so they can have structured conversations. Students have think time to prepare their answers using these supports, and then they turn and talk. You can hear an incredible improvement in the quality of math talk. Just like training wheels, once students become comfortable with academic conversations, they’re more likely to start up these conversations organically.
There are a ton of sentence starters out there and you can find the ones that work the best for your students. You might want to even start out with just one or two for them to choose from. Many of the students we work with in math intervention have a lack of academic vocabulary and this gives them an authentic experience with using more formal language.
I put sentence starters on a student name tent. The side you can see above shows sentence frames that students are expected to use when talking about math. The other side shows their name so that students can address each other by name confidently. In addition, when we’re doing independent practice they can display how they feel about what they’re doing by showing “Got It” or, on the other side “Not Yet.”
Putting the tips into practice
One final bit of (unsolicited?) advice: Don’t try to change everything in your class all at once and don’t throw away the things that you do that are already working. I’ve taken these tips and put them all into one document for you. You can download it for free here. Try something and see if you can get students more engaged, more accountable, and more success in math intervention. I can’t wait to hear how it goes!
Thanks so much for reading. Until next time!
