September 30, 2012

Tell About an Opportunity You Had to Work One on One With a Student

While the students were working on a subtraction assignment, they could go to the teacher in the back of the room for some feedback and she would circle the problems they had done incorrectly. A student raised his hand and I came over to help. He had almost all of his problems circled. I could see that he understood the concept of regrouping (borrowing), but he was doing very poorly on simple arithmetic. I remember asking him, "what's seven minus four?" He would think for a few seconds and say pretty confidently "four." I asked him if he was sure and then held up seven fingers and counted backwards four times. He could see now that the answer was three.

We tried this a few more times and almost every time he tried to subtract in his head he would come up with the wrong answer, but every single time he counted on his fingers he came up with the right one. I told him to always count on his fingers when he wasn't sure and that I do it all the time. I left him to work alone and wandered around the class for a few minutes. When I came back, I could see the he was finally getting the right answers consistently.

Everyone learns differently. Some students can do subtraction from memorization or in their heads, and others need visual cues, like counting on fingers, or some other method. I don't think any one method is better than the other. This particular student I was working with seemed to possibly be a kinestetic or visual learner. Physically doing the action of counting down on his fingers every time allowed him to succeed.