Strategies

Make Your Practice Transparent

Information is power. I try to share my knowledge and experience and my expertise as a teacher so students can act on it, not because I say so, but because they have chosen on the evidence to do so. My job is not to "do them good," but rather to share what I know about how to learn math so they can make their decisions about their own learning.

Help Them Learn about Themselves

There are many on-line and pencil-and-paper inventories that will help students understand their own learning styles and their areas of strength. If you have access to counseling services, there may be someone there who can work with individuals or with the class as a whole to help people figure themselves out. I like to do more than one inventory, so that students can compare the results. Some of the inventories listed below give results in the shape of a graph, which leads to interesting comparisons from one student to another. After the students have a good idea of their strengths, go on to work with them to design assignments or study plans that work best for them.

Multiple Intelligences test: gives a graphic print out; uses plain language terms as well as regular, for example Linguistic Intelligence is also called Word Smart. http://www2.bgfl.org/bgfl2/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/index.htm

Multiple Intelligences inventory: a checklist, shorter than the inventory above. http://snow.utoronto.ca/prof_dev/tht/multint/content/miref.html

Learning styles: gives a graphic printout.
http://www.learning-styles-online.com/inventory/default.asp?ref=ga&data=learning+styles+free+test

Learning styles: a checklist shorter than the one above http://www.metamath.com/lsweb/dvclearn.htm

Give up the Power to Make Decisions

To solve a math problem, or to do some computation, you have to make decisions: Of all this information, what is relevant? What features of this problem are similar to ones I’ve solved before? What do I really want to find out? How shall I begin? Do I put the big number on top or on the bottom? One of my goals as an instructor is to put learners in charge of making decisions. How do I shape my practice to accomplish this goal? Following are some answers to this question.