Throughout my years as a math interventionist, I’ve used and seen a variety of structures and classes for students who struggle with math. In addition to struggling with math, most of these students in our math intervention classrooms have also struggled with reading comprehension and lacked academic vocabulary. Personally, I’ve worked with hundreds of these students. While each student is unique, there are definitely similarities and patterns that arise.
One thing that’s common among these students is that they don’t believe they are good at math. They’ve had little success when it comes to grade level content. This usually can be traced back to their earliest experiences with numbers and math concepts.
So, where do you even start? Today I want to share with you a variety of strategies and structures I’ve seen help these struggling students experience success with grade level math.
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Success is what creates motivation
In a math lab class, motivation doesn’t just happen. The students we work with often have a lot of walls up. Usually, they have extreme behaviors. They may act out a lot, or they may internalize their fears and never speak in class. One strategy that helps overcome this is making sure that students have success early and often. I’ve come to believe that motivation isn’t something that’s just sitting there inside of us. Motivation comes from success.
One of my favorite topics to start my math intervention class with is adding and subtracting integers. I know that I can get students to be successful with it. Starting with a more “accessible” topic can go a long way towards creating a sense of success that you can then build upon.
Teach growth mindset
If you haven’t heard about growth mindset yet, then one of the first things you should do when preparing to teach a math intervention class (in my humble opinion!) is learn everything you can about it. In short, this work comes from the work of Carol Dweck. She talks about the concept that we can either believe that we can get better at skills through work and struggle, what she calls growth mindset, or we believe that we are born with a set of skills and there is nothing we can do to change that, called fixed mindset. We all have growth mindset and fixed mindset about different parts of our lives. When students are aware that these mindsets exist, then they can understand themselves as math students better.
In a growth mindset, failure and struggle are seen as an inevitable part of learning and growing. There’s a belief that your ability to do something isn’t just inborn. Intelligence and ability is something that you can develop and improve through effort.
In a fixed mindset, on the other hand, failure is something to be avoided at all costs. Failure exposes your weakness and intelligence is seen as already set and unable to be changed. This is especially evident in math when you hear people say, “I’m just not a math person.”
It’s well worth your time to explicitly teach about growth mindset at the beginning of the year and then use this concept throughout the year. Students can identify their own growth and fixed mindset and have the opportunity to see their growth. With some students this can be an extreme struggle because they use the fixed mindset to view themselves in school. Every time they can’t do something they just exclaim, “I’m stupid.” or “I’m bad at math.” I’m not going to say that it is easy to get them to undo this self-programming, but when a student overcomes it the results are amazing.
Remember i plus 1
When I was a new teacher I worked with ELL students. One of the best training programs that I ever experienced was called SIOP. It was specifically for working with ELL students, but it has been a great foundation for working with students who have a lack of academic language. One of the concepts that I remember from this training was the concept of i plus one. This means that you start where the student is and add one. One is something that involves productive struggle, but does not lead to cognitive exhaustion.
You start where the students are and add a little bit. If you try to add too much then they’ll rebel. Surely, you’ve been in a learning experience where the instructor went too fast, too far, or too much for you. You want to challenge students, but always make sure that students can be successful. If they have to reach too far, they will just fall.
Math Intervention Strategies
Tracking progress
You want students to understand that they’re being successful. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told a student a test result and they looked at me and said, “Is that good?” I’ve learned that you have to teach students how to track their progress and how to understand their results. Another thing you can do is to have them relate their effort to their results.
Each day in my math intervention class students take a quiz on our focus topic. The quiz is graded right away, and students reflect on their progress. If they get a question correct, then they put a star. If they get a question wrong, then they immediately do test corrections to learn from their error. I remind students constantly that then we have a growth mindset, these errors are the gateway to learning, not something to be frustrated by.
Students keep track of all their quizzes over the unit on the same 1-2 pages (usually 8 quizzes altogether), making a great visual for them to use to see their own progress.
Whether students are working on a computer program or some other form of intervention, they should have some sort of progress tracking paper. I prefer to do this on paper because you can see it anytime and you don’t have to be on the computer. My students keep their progress trackers in their class folder that they use everyday.
Reflections
Once your students are good at tracking their progress, have them engage in reflection. There are a variety of ways to have students reflect on their progress and learning. They can write about it or talk about it. In a math lab class I prefer to engage them in a discussion and coach them about how to reflect. It’s not something that they do naturally, so you have to take time to teach them how to do it.
The questions you ask can lead students to where you want them to go. To improve the quality of student responses I often include sentence stems to help them formulate their responses (see a simple example above). This technique helps them tremendously to get their ideas out on paper. Usually, they don’t know where to start and the stems give them confidence to begin their response.
Routines
When you are trying to build confidence and skill in students’ math ability, routines are a must-have. Routines in the math classroom save class time getting into and out of activities. Since time is precious and we want to focus our time on math learning not activity directions, consider having a few routines so students immediately know what to do to get started.
Here are some of my favorite routines in the math intervention class:
- Student whiteboards
- Whole class review games
- Partner work
Whiteboards
Students love practicing with whiteboards. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t use a whiteboard or dry-erase sleeve in my math lab class. It’s also a great way for me to see how my students are doing. If the students won’t show their work or participate with the whiteboard activity, then you know you may be going past their zone of proximal development.
(Check out how dry-erase sleeves and other simple tools make my classroom run and keep things fun in this post.)
Whole class review games
Some students are resistant to anything they perceive as work. That’s why I love games in math intervention class. I have a lot of different games that I use, and students love when we get to play a game. It also gives you a chance to work on the life skills of sportsmanship and being respectful. My favorite games to play with intervention students are the target game, bingo, and Kahoot. You can read more about 18 review games I like to play with my students here.
When you’re playing any of these games you still want to have paper or whiteboards for students to complete their work (unless you’re working on mental math, of course). When you move from independent work to playing a whole class game, you’ll see a totally different group of kids!
Partner work
We rely on partners in my intervention class. They don’t always work with a partner, but they do about 50% of the time. I’ve found that you have to teach students how to work with partners. Emphasize that it’s a partnership and not just one person doing the work and the other one copying. There are so many benefits of giving students the chance to talk about the math they’re learning. Plus, you can be more or less structured with partners.
Sometimes, I give students a sentence stem. Then, they’re completing the sentence stem when they talk to their partners. Other times it’s less formal and students are helping each other understand. I just constantly remind them to explain things and to not just do the work for their partner.
Math Intervention Class Structures
Structuring your intervention class will have a lot to do with who the students are, what concepts you’re trying to teach, how many students are in the class, and how much time you have. In my ideal math lab class I’d have 10-12 students who struggle with math for about 40 minutes a day for the entire school year. This would give me the opportunity to really build their confidence and their conceptual understanding.
Now, this isn’t likely to happen for various reasons: students move in and out of the school, class periods are usually longer than 40 minutes, and some of the students who end up in the class are there because they didn’t try on the test and not because they struggle overall.
Most likely you’ll have a larger group of students for about an hour and students will come in and out of your intervention time. In this case, I’d keep the intervention time to 40 minutes and then work on pre-teaching grade level content for the other 20 minutes.
Focused Content
There’s a phrase that is commonly used by teachers and administrators when talking about intervention: we need to “fill in the gaps”. I’ve come to hate this phrase because most of the students I’ve worked with don’t have gaps. Instead they have chasms, canyons, and abysses of missing math structures. For the most part they need much more than “filling in gaps”.
On occasion you’ll get students in math lab that just needs a little boost to get them back on track, but for the most part you’ll work with students who need so much more help. So, when you have students whose needs are so great you could focus on almost anything with them.
When I first started with intervention I went back to 2nd and 3rd grade concepts with them. We worked on place value and fractions. What I found was that this didn’t help them in their grade level class. You only get 30 to 60 minutes a day with these students and they need to be successful in their grade level content. So, it’s important to make sure that what you are doing is relevant and builds confidence.
To determine what to teach in my math intervention class I ask myself- what prerequisite skills do students need to be able to do in order to access the grade-level content? For example, working on one- and two-step equations will help students prepare for the grade level expectation of multi-step equations. Or, reviewing angle vocabulary from the year before will help students prepare to work with transversals and exterior angles of a triangle.
Extremely focused math intervention units
The units that you use should be focused and lengthy. If you only work on a concept for a day or two with struggling learners, they most likely won’t be able to build a foundation. That’s a big reason they’re in the spot that they are in to begin with. They haven’t had the length of time or the repetitions that they need to learn skills and concepts. You may have to stay on the same topic like adding and subtracting integers for 2 to 4 weeks. If you do it right, though, they’ll be the best in the school with adding and subtracting integers after that time. Ultimately, being successful with these skills will also help them be successful in their grade level class.
Pre-teach the grade level content
One of my favorite years as an interventionist was when I co-taught with a new teacher for 3 hours a day and then I had math intervention classes working with students from those 3 classes. I had an amazing opportunity to see them and teach them in their grade level math class and then support their struggles in math lab. The strategy that I learned through this experience was to pre-teach the grade level concepts.
I knew what was coming so I made sure that the students got a couple of looks at these concepts. This was the best thing to boost their confidence in their regular class. My students went from being the quietest students in the class to confidently raising their hands.
I’d suggest to all math interventionists who have the opportunity to pre-teach as much as you can. If you focus on key vocabulary and how to talk about the concept, they can talk about it. Plus, when their when their general education class gets to that topic, students’ practice time in that class becomes more productive and successful than it would otherwise be.
Putting it into Action
There are many things to consider when setting up your math lab class or math intervention time with struggling students. I’d recommend thinking through the structures and strategies that you want to use and making a plan for the year.
If you can establish routines and get students to experience success, you’ll definitely see them grow as math students- which is so rewarding! It’s my favorite part of being a math interventionist. I can’t get enough of that moment when students get something. If you structure your class well, then you’ll see those little light bulb moments on a daily basis.
Thanks so much for reading. Until next time!
