Peter Swire
From TeacherWiki
Contents |
Introduction
A minute with knowledge tracing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owD7MqVo-gE
Routines
Small Groups
At the start of the class, we use our ASSISTments data to divide the students into groups of four or five students. The students know that the groups were based on the previous night's homework, and students often come into class knowing what they need. Mrs. Delaney noted that before ASSISTments, this was not common.
Peter takes one of the groups and reviews the current topic with them. He shows them a few examples, works through a few examples with them, and then observes them while they do a few problems on their own. If a student gets stuck or has trouble doing problems alone, Peter goes back to showing examples and working through examples with the student individually. This process is repeated as needed for each subtopic in a lesson.
Individual Help
Unless everybody is doing very well, Peter or Mrs. Delaney (but not both) will often end up sitting down with a student alone. For example, in one of the small groups a student couldn't remember how to find a common denominator. While the rest of the group was working individually (see the Small Groups section), Peter took a minute to work through a few common denominator problems with that student.
Another example: one of the students who started the year behind the rest of the class broke his writing hand. He had been making great progress, and so to make sure he didn't fall behind again Peter wrote for him and reviewed with him individually. This student had been failing but the next day passed a test 100 percent with a teacher scribing for him.
