While circulating with my clipboard during today's math problem, I was reminded of the importance of really taking the time to allow students to show what they truly know, understand and can do (rather than what you may at first glance think they know!)
One student this morning was adding two numbers together to show how far the fictitious family in the problem travelled to get to Grandma's to celebrate Chinese New Year. I was so pleased to see him figure out that "they travelled x more than y on the second day" meant he had to add x to y in order to get the distance traveled that day, and then add that new number to the original y to get the total, that I almost jotted down a "level 3" with a smiley face next to his name, and moved on to the next student. But, so surprised was I by his apparently miraculous transformation (this is a student who generally struggles in math), that I lingered a little, just to celebrate this small victory.
Alas (well, thank goodness, really!), my lingering led to the realization that the student wasn't quite as tuned-in as I had thought at first...
He was writing down all the right numbers on his whiteboard, but he didn't know what they meant. Several times I asked him to tell me what each number represented, and each time, he either gave an incorrect response, or seemed confused about what I was asking.
Bummer. But an important lesson. We are often so eager to look for the growth in situations like this that we can be tricked into preemptively celebrating a victory.
Listening a little longer helped me to diagnose the problem for this student, and plan for next steps.
One student this morning was adding two numbers together to show how far the fictitious family in the problem travelled to get to Grandma's to celebrate Chinese New Year. I was so pleased to see him figure out that "they travelled x more than y on the second day" meant he had to add x to y in order to get the distance traveled that day, and then add that new number to the original y to get the total, that I almost jotted down a "level 3" with a smiley face next to his name, and moved on to the next student. But, so surprised was I by his apparently miraculous transformation (this is a student who generally struggles in math), that I lingered a little, just to celebrate this small victory.
Alas (well, thank goodness, really!), my lingering led to the realization that the student wasn't quite as tuned-in as I had thought at first...
He was writing down all the right numbers on his whiteboard, but he didn't know what they meant. Several times I asked him to tell me what each number represented, and each time, he either gave an incorrect response, or seemed confused about what I was asking.
Bummer. But an important lesson. We are often so eager to look for the growth in situations like this that we can be tricked into preemptively celebrating a victory.
Listening a little longer helped me to diagnose the problem for this student, and plan for next steps.