Sunday, March 8, 2009
Accelerated or Individual Math
One strategy that I am very interested in is Accelerated math. This strategy allows students to work at there own pace. Completing homework, quizzes, and tests at there own speed. This allows for advanced students to work ahead, while letting other have extra time on topics. This strategy would be most ideal in a perfect world, but seems very hard to implement in the classroom. One tool that maybe able to help with this problem is an online course. We have online courses at our school called Oddesy Ware. It has lessons, homework, quizzes, tests and even projects for the students to complete. This is a type of accelerated math, but it is done with no instruction from me. All of the students in this program either have a study hall, or have a free period to work on the course. But they do not have any instruction or face time with me. What I would like it to have a whole class of students on oddesy ware allowing them to progress at there own rates while still getting instruction from me when they need it. I would not be preforming lectures but instead one on one instruction. This also has some draw backs. One would be class size, as class size increases the amount of students I can cover in one period would decrease. Another is resources I'd have to have enough computers for every student in my class. A third problem would be keeping students on task, because if they take to long on a lot of topics they could possibly miss out on finishing the course before the end of the semester.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Odessy is used at Hermiston High School in their sped department for students who struggle with math in a more traditional setting. I wish we had the resources to implement a school system that focuses on students achieving mastery levels for each subject rather than "grade" level. I would agree with you it would be very difficult to implement and to motivate students to complete their work. As you said...in an ideal world!
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting strategy that might work in math. I would think that it would work better with higher level math classes, because your students would tend to be more motivated (intrinsically and extrinsically). Our calculus teacher has one “TAG” student that she felt could get more out of the online course than staying at the pace of the rest of the class. He would come in and do the work for his course while she taught the rest of the calculus students. He was extremely smart and self-motivated so it worked great.
ReplyDelete