Tiffany Trevenen has worked in Moffat County Schools in Craig, Colo., for more than 30 years and has seen students experience the same math problems over and over again.
“It was very apparent in the upper grades of elementary school that the kids had no number sense,” said Trevenen, who is now the instructional coordinator at Sandrock Elementary School in the district. Higher level math skills.
“They had nothing to do with numbers. “I didn’t know how to fill that gap,” he said.
The Moffat School has long used reading screening assessments to identify students who need additional help in the early elementary years. But there was nothing similar in mathematics. “We didn’t have the resources or the time to do math interventions,” Trevenen said.
But this year has been different. Administrators purchased intervention materials and placed dedicated blocks on the schedule. Now Trevenen and her colleagues are thinking about how best to use their time to support students. For example, you may be wondering whether to work with students in small groups or when to use a skills program to practice newly learned skills. “We’re on the front lines of figuring it out,” she said.
Trevenen's experience reflects a broader national trend. Elementary schools have long prioritized early intervention to help students read before they leave the early grades, often at the expense of providing similar support to students who struggle in math, experts say. Despite the findings, this pattern persists. Early math skills are a major predictor of later academic success.
Maths 'lags behind' reading in education policy
The tendency for math to take a backseat to reading is evident both in policy and historically in public perception.
Over the past decade, 37 states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation. or took other steps to require schools to transition to evidence-based reading instruction, often mandating interventions for struggling students. Many of these laws were enacted as national support grew for the “science of reading” movement, an attempt to link classroom instruction with research on how young children learn to read.
Only seven states have passed similar legislation in the math area. Recently.
“Math has always lagged behind reading, both in terms of assessment and in terms of intervention,” said Ben Clarke, a professor of school psychology at the University of Oregon who studies math assessment and instruction.
“It was a joke. [President George W.] “President Bush had a reading-first plan, which would be reading first, and then math in the future.” Clark said, referring to a federal grant program in the early 2000s to raise reading scores. “Ask 100 people on the street what the most important skill children learn in elementary school is, and 98 of them will say reading.”
Data show that schools are more likely to provide targeted instructional supports and interventions for early reading than for math. 2015 study Among 13 states, 71% of schools had implemented response-to-intervention practices in first-grade reading, while only 35% had implemented them in first-grade math. (RTI is a tiered system for intervention that provides increasingly robust support to students who struggle with whole-class instruction. Many schools now use a multi-tiered system of support, or MTSS.Combines academic intervention with social-emotional support.)
But Nancy Jordan, a professor of learning sciences at the University of Delaware, said early intervention in math is not only possible, but can have a big impact on students later in life.
“We know that these initial numerical capabilities are variable. “When children receive this intervention, they can improve their number knowledge,” she said. She says, “If you don't learn early number skills and you're not comfortable with them, you're going to have a hard time learning higher level skills, because the two skills are so intertwined.”
What Early Years Mathematics Examiners Assess
To determine which students need more help, schools can use math screeners, a simple assessment that determines whether students are performing at grade level. Most math tests students take in kindergarten or first grade aim to determine their number sense, Jordan said.
Number sense is a vague term that refers to a child's ability to understand quantities, connect numbers together, and perform simple operations such as addition and subtraction. Researchers say these different abilities can be assessed through separate tasks.
For example, a student might be asked to count a series of objects while the teacher monitors certain skills, Jordan said. Can we count in a stable order? Do you count each number only once? Did you know that the last number in a set represents the total number of objects? Clarke said students may need to identify missing numbers in a sequence.
To test their understanding of size, students are asked which number is larger, for example 4 or 6. Children may also be asked to make up and break down numbers, Clarke said. For example, it tests your understanding that 5 is made up of 2 and 3. Older students in first and second grades learn these types of addition and subtraction operations, Jordan and Clarke said.
“Young children who have good number sense and can think about number operations and can add and subtract small quantities tend to do much better in math by first grade and up because they have built this basic understanding,” Jordan said. . .
When learning math factsThey are able to connect facts with an understanding of how numbers work, rather than just randomly memorizing them, she said.
But identifying students who struggle with these skills is only a starting point, Clarke said. “There has to be a link to intervention, otherwise you’re just admiring the problem.”
And the tools can be crude. Many people label students with numbers or color designations (green for on track, yellow for on edge, red for below grade level). “It’s only vaguely helpful,” said Mary Pittman, director of mathematics at TNTP, an organization that consults with schools on teacher training and instructional strategies. She said, “It means you have to figure out what to do for that child.”
Bailey Cato Czupryk, TNTP's senior vice president for research and impact, said the goal of screening should be to connect children with these supports rather than permanently label them as “left behind.” State policies are often written to encourage flexible grouping and ensure that students who need additional help do not miss out on grade-level instruction. But “we don’t provide teachers with support on how to do this,” she said.
How is your school responding to state mandates?
In Florida, school districts are exploring ways to provide such intervention time after the state passed a law mandating it last year..
HB 7039 requires students in grades K-4 who have “significant deficits in math” or the math learning disability dyscalculia., get targeted support. It also requires the State Department of Education to provide a list of approved intervention programs.
“This law puts math on equal footing with reading. Both are required by law and you have to find a way to fit them into your schedule,” said Elizabeth Abel, an elementary math coach at Hernando County Schools in Florida. “He said. President of the Florida Council of Mathematics Teachers.
Before the law was passed, Hernando County was already screening students for math problems and relied on several other resources for intervention, Abel said.
She added that when teachers work with students in small groups to provide concrete representations of mathematical ideas, “often these strategies involve practical and conceptual understanding.” This is recommended practice. Brought to you by the Institute of Education Sciences' What Works Clearinghouse for struggling elementary school students.
Abel said ensuring consistent hours to provide this additional instruction is a challenge for some schools. This is especially true if students need support in multiple subjects. Some schools in the district are trying to schedule intervention blocks before and after school as a solution.
Abel hopes that by focusing more on interventions across the state, there will also be more attention on everyday whole-class math instruction. Throughout math instruction, teachers should use the same strategies that research shows support struggling students, she said.
Clarke, a professor at the University of Oregon, shares the same view.
“The real power of these screening systems…is that they change the core training frequently,” he said. “Educators are starting to realize that if 60% of our kids are off track, then 70% of our kids are also off track. That’s common. Small groups are not going to get us out of this.”