Rashid’s eyes lit up when he saw that he was correct. I asked them to continue
doing the activity with the pattern Chad created, but I stayed to support Rashid
as he figured out the next parts of the pattern. Each time Chad asked Rashid,
“What comes next?” I asked Rashid to start back at the beginning of the pattern
and say the color of each tile as he points to it and then say what color he thinks
is next. Rashid was able to finish his turn successfully with this extra support.
Although he had been successful, I encouraged him to also practice with AB pat-
terns to build his confidence. I asked him to make patterns that would make sense
to him.
The next time Rashid worked on identifying what came next in a pattern,
he started by repeating the process of saying out loud the part of the pattern that
he could see, and I made sure he touched each piece as he said its name. Each
time we got ready to name the next missing piece, I asked him to start at the be-
ginning and touch and name each piece up to the next missing piece. Although
this process took extra time, it allowed Rashid to experience more success than
he had in the past. He was able to name the pattern correctly as he touched each
tile. There was something about going back to the beginning each time and the
tactile experience along with the voicing of the pattern that made him more
confident. Repetitive oral and physical prompts are important with students like
Rashid who struggle to retain learning from the previous lessons. Sometimes I
also asked him, “Can you lay the units in a row on top or next to each other?” I
would often ask students to place each unit on top of each other or lined up flat
on the table, one underneath the last one, to see if they match the rest of the
units. The consistent restating of directions and cues, what I call “overlearning,”
or practicing newly acquired skills to integrate them thoroughly, helped him build
this critical piece of understanding.
Providing Additional Contexts
Another way I attempt to help students build understanding from one session
to the next is to continue the strategies I use with them when we’re in the small
group at our whole-group meetings. I find these strategies often help make the
mathematics explicit for the whole group, so I use the same language when we
are having a whole-group discussion to wrap up the lesson. I let the students in
my small group know that I will be asking them the same questions in the large
group that I already asked them. I prepare them ahead of time so they can
contribute to the whole-class discussion. For example, when Rashid was mak-
ing pattern trains with cubes, I told him I would be asking him to name his
pattern in the large group using his written recording to help him articulate his
thinking.
MAKINGMATHEMATICSEXPLICIT