Personalized Learning Case Study; Pokemon math integration https://toseaornottosee.com

Personalized Learning Part 2: Case Study Update

 

Personalized Learning Part 2: Case Study Update

My first day work­ing with this 2nd grade learn­ing dis­abled stu­dent, we’ll call John, I real­ized I would have to go back to the draw­ing board. I need­ed  to revise the per­son­al­ized learn­ing plan for math I had made for him. Some parts would have to be thrown away for the plan to have any pos­i­tive, long-last­ing effect on him. The first day was a one-on-one assess­ment of John. I sat with him to go through a basic two-dig­it addi­tion sheet with­out regrouping.

Togeth­er, we looked at the first prob­lem. I set him up for suc­cess by draw­ing the lines to split the ver­ti­cal­ly stacked addi­tion prob­lem into tens and ones. Then I labeled the columns. He need­ed to add 1+0. I could tell how hard he was work­ing to process the ques­tion. He could­n’t give me an answer oth­er than 0, and that was after using manip­u­la­tives and draw­ings to help him.

Back to the Beginning

I lit­er­al­ly pulled out one of my favorite math teach­ing strat­e­gy books as I was sit­ting there with him. I want­ed this encounter to end suc­cess­ful­ly for him. The book rec­om­mend­ed learn­ing a dou­bles math fact a day. I wrote a fact on an index card. For the rest of the day he car­ried the card around with him. The first fact was 1+1. He suc­ceed­ed in telling me what was on the card with­out hav­ing to look at it. At this rate, we were not going to make much progress on our goal.

We are at the halfway mark in the school year. John works dai­ly with an ESE teacher and has help in the class­room. How­ev­er, our focus has been to get him to mas­ter the new math cur­ricu­lum. It is so com­plex and the strate­gies are so tight­ly weaved togeth­er, I don’t believe he will mas­ter it this year.

The next day, I gave him a 2+2 addi­tion card to work on through­out the day until we met lat­er. He could­n’t pro­duce the fact with­out read­ing it off the card when­ev­er I asked. The Poke­mon skill cen­tered chal­lenge I planned to get him to reach mas­tery of two-dig­it addi­tion facts was on hold. Instead, I decid­ed to try some card games to prac­tice sev­er­al learn­ing strate­gies that would add to his math toolbelt.

Why I Chose Cards

Play­ing card games is asso­ci­at­ed with fun. I want­ed him to asso­ciate work­ing with me as fun. In no way did I want it even resem­ble math. We were just hav­ing fun. And if we were learn­ing math inci­den­tal­ly, well, that could­n’t be helped. 😉

We end­ed that first day togeth­er with a sim­ple card game. We both flip over a card. He counts his and mine and tells me who has more. The win­ner keeps the cards. At the end of the game, we count how many we have. This is a sim­ple prac­tice of count­ing and com­par­ing one and two dig­it numbers.

Counting On

The next day, we start­ed with the same game. For the next round, we flipped two cards a piece. All of a sud­den, the game is much more com­pli­cat­ed. I am mon­i­tor­ing hime for any signs of stress. I want zero affec­tive fil­ter here. Stress inter­feres with com­pre­hen­sion so I am pre­pared to return to the eas­i­er game.

I watched him count each num­ber on each card. Once he count­ed one card, some­times he would start over instead of com­bin­ing the num­bers. So, for exam­ple, if he had a  3 and a 2, he would say, “1, 2, 3, 1, 2.”  I taught him to slap the larg­er card and point to the sym­bols on the small­er card to get the answer. He actu­al­ly showed a pref­er­ence to hav­ing the larg­er card on his right. He’d move it into place to get ready to count on.

After we’d flip  two cards apiece, he’d count his, using the count­ing on strat­e­gy, then mine. Some­times, he’d for­get his and have to count it again. Then, he would tell me who won.

I made a big deal about how he kept win­ning. He was grin­ning, ges­tic­u­lat­ing when he’d beat me yet again, but most impor­tant­ly, he was adding!

Making a Ten

We also played a quick Mak­ing a Ten match game. I pulled out maybe five sets of cards that would equal ten. Again, I wan’t no stress to inter­fere with his learning.

Through­out the game, I did not get a sense that he knew which num­ber he was look­ing for to match up. How­ev­er, when he’d count the num­bers on the cards, he knew with­out me telling him whether he had made ten. I think with more prac­tice, he will be able to tell me the num­ber he needs as his num­ber sense develops.

Wins for Today

By the end of the games, I no longer had to mod­el count­ing on. He was doing it like a pro. He could add and com­pare two sets of num­bers simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. He could make a ten. Also, I noticed he stopped skip­ping num­bers. He would skip either 15 or 16 when count­ing on. By the end of the game, he was con­fi­dent­ly count­ing on with­out skip­ping any num­bers. I plan to build on that suc­cess. Stay tuned for part three of my per­son­al­ized learn­ing case study. Here is a link to Part One of the study.

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