For a lot of my students, accessing the mathematics is difficult, and they have different ways to do so. I offer all of my assignments in digital and paper form, I go over the assignments with the students in multiple different ways, modeling, asking, showing, working with them individually and as groups, using good visual representations of the ideas, etc. However, I have several students for whom even this is insufficient differentiation. Several of these students need fidget toys, or they make their own, or they are HUGE distracting forces in my classroom (overwhelming at times).
For several of these students, I have found good communication to be the answer. They are capable of focusing for a minute, so if I need them to pay attention to something before they go off again, I will set up my lesson to let them mess around before I pull them back in and release. This has been very successful. However, the time they are not focusing is still an issue, as they tend to distract other students as well. My solution to this was math puzzles. I have a small collection of math toys, puzzles, and small individual games. I got more. Then I gave some of these games out to students who I knew would benefit from the mental activity and for whom the distraction would prevent them from BEING distractions to the class. The issue is that the puzzles themselves became a huge distraction. Students were getting up and walking across the class to play with these things instead of doing their work. The solution had become the problem! For the students who these toys were originally meant to help, they were great! For everybody else they became a distraction. The first time this happened I took them all away and put them back in my drawer of math games. But then the original distractions popped up. When I took them back out, all the students became distracted! I finally tried to use these games as a reward. Most students would not ask for them if they were not visible and easily available. The ones who did, I could use the puzzles as a sort of carrot, and it worked well. However, I was still having problems with the students who would otherwise be working hard being distracted by the students who needed these things to fidget with in order to be productive. I have still not found a good, equitable solution for this. Do I sacrifice my strong students focus for more focus from the students who really need it? This seems like a good way to narrow the gap, but it does not feel like the RIGHT way to do so. In the end, I think I am going to have an explicit conversation with the students with whom it is an issue, and not make a bigger scene out of it. I think that there is a healthy enough conversation between my students and I that I can be straightforward about my expectations and their abilities and needs. This is one of the benefits of having a healthy community. I will see how this goes this coming week! Math toys rule!
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Julian SpringerMath Department - Animas High School Archives
December 2019
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