Thoughts on Intervention

I”m in the process of thinking through details that I probably don’t need to be thinking through in April when I have a million other things I should probably be doing right now how I can grade my Algebra 1 Support classes next year.

Let me back up. Last semester, I decided that I wanted to introduce a standards-based grading system in my Financial Literacy class. The material in this course is so important to students’ life after high school that I really wanted to come up with a way to help them internalize some of the motivation to learn it, and I thought SBG would help that. I got conditional approval from my principal and typed up a document describing specifically how I would implement it. (He asked for a paragraph and got two pages. I’m fairly sure he knows me well enough that he was not surprised by this.) I have written previously about why I’ve avoided this type of grading system with my Algebra 1 class, but the seniors are far enough removed from their middle school experiences that I thought it would be ok.

Math Intervention…or “This Is All Schneider’s Fault”

In January, my roommate/colleague and I went to the University of Arizona’s Center for the Recruitment and Retention of Teachers Mathematics Educator Appreciation Day conference. (And…now I’m tired of typing.) We went to a math teacher conference that was local. Dan Schneider was there doing a session on math intervention, and I told my roommate to go to his session because she is currently teaching an intervention-type class and I’m not. I told her if she didn’t go, I would. I follow Dan on Twitter and I also follow his blog, so I know that I really like what he has to say. Specifically, his series of posts on answer-getting about a year ago really resonated with me. I saw these same attitudes and behaviors in my own students, and was thrilled to hear that I was trying something that he was also trying, and get other strategies that might help.