Schools calculate new ways to help students connect to math

Public school officials are hoping for improved math skills as the $3.5-million math coach program expands this fall from 25 coaches circulating in 52 schools to 31 coaches in 61 schools.

But math experts say an improved culture of learning also needs to include better engagement between teachers and students, increased efforts to combine math drills with deeper understanding and less time spent on distracting technology.

Jeannie Everett, superintendent of learning at the Calgary Board of Education, said teachers have been overwhelmingly supportive of math coaches coming into their classrooms in the first seven months of the program, providing them with “high-impact” strategies that allow them to not only understand the material better, but most importantly pass on that understanding to their students, whatever level they’re at.

“We’ve seen a lot of intensive work in a number of schools. And our surveys have shown that 84 per cent of teachers felt that math coaches enhanced their teaching practices.”

Everett said the math coach program has been a success so far, with hopes that math results in standardized testing will eventually improve. “We may not see a lot of changes after just one year, but we always hope for improvement.”

But Brent Davis, a math education specialist and researcher at the University of Calgary’s Werklund School of Education, said while math teachers may have a profound knowledge of the discipline, they also need to understand what it was like to think like a novice.

He admits that while a number of exciting resources for math learning are being developed, along with new research around neuroscience and how we learn math, much of the data remains fragmented.

His research team at the U of C has embarked on a seven-year study called Math Minds, building an improved model for math learning focusing mainly on engagement, ensuring teachers check in with students regularly to ensure they understand.

Davis calls it a “ribboned lesson,” where teachers present only one concept at a time, only enough that a student’s working memory can handle, and ensure every student understands before they move on.

The approach, Davis said, falls under the acronym RaPID, which involves first “Ravelling” or unwinding the fine details of a concept, taking it apart with students and then putting it back together again; and then inviting a “Prompt” or asking students to engage and respond to a question. Students are also then asked to “Interpret” the question and then finally both student and teacher “Decide” whether they can move on.

Davis argues checking in with students or “noticing” whether they understand is the key to success.

“You can teach math better if you know whether your students are with you or not,” he said.

Classrooms must be set up in ways to achieve this kind of success, too, Davis added, moving away from teachers standing in front of a classroom to teach from a board.

Instead, Math Minds encourages teachers to move throughout the classroom, checking students’ work throughout the lesson, even providing individual whiteboards students can hold up to show teachers their work.

Lisa Davis, CBE trustee for Wards 6 and 7, said she attended the Math Minds presentation at the U of C in the spring and was extremely impressed with online resources connected to the program, including Jump Math.

“One of the interesting aspects to this program is the robust resources there are for teachers — both print and online — that enable teachers to access resource material at their own pace and initiative,” she said.

“I look forward to hearing more this fall when we review the results of our math achievement.”

Aaron Renert, principal and cofounder of Renert School and the popular Bright Minds math tutoring program, said distractions and shorter attention spans also continue to be a growing challenge for students.

“Kids today are exposed to a lot of technology — iPhones, iPads,” he said.

“It’s changing the architecture of the brain, so much so that applying themselves to a task that requires concentration is becoming very difficult.”

It’s part of the reason, Renert said, that math tutoring programs like his have become increasingly popular in the last decade. He said the key to math success includes teaching a critical combination of both understanding concepts along with drills and repetition exercises to increase confidence and aptitude.

“You cannot have one without the other. Math is not a fact to just be memorized, it is part of a system. And it needs to be presented in a curriculum that is less cluttered and more clear.”