Hi, y’all! I teach self contained high school math (Pre-Algebra, Algebra, and Geometry). I cannot tell if my expectations are too high and I truly feel crazy at this point.
Hi, y’all! I teach self contained high school math (Pre-Algebra, Algebra, and Geometry). I cannot tell if my expectations are too high and I truly feel crazy at this point. Most of what my classes do is together during class. I never give homework outside of class. Our normal week looks like: - one day of fill in the blank notes that have steps written out and numbered. - one day of a “homework” sheet that they do on their own during class. Not grading for accuracy, but participation as long as they were working the whole class period. - one day of going over homework so they have the correct answers because all quizzes and tests are open note. I grade this one for accuracy because they should have wrote down the answers I gave them. - sometimes notes will take two days or I’ll give two days for practice if its really hard and I want them to get enough practice. We are now in 4th quarter and I have given the first project of the entire year where I expect them to be somewhat independent. It is a “game of life” slideshow. All slides have directions, info filled in, and highlighted red boxes that say “add text” if they need to do something there. I have been putting the slide show on my board and filling it out with them and then asking them to do an example on their own. I gave them the equation, the actual variable values, and color coded where they should go. It was still too difficult. I had a student ask me what to put in “name” yesterday. Yes, the context of consolidating debt may be difficult, but I’m not asking them about consolidation itself, I’m asking them to plug in these numbers I gave them in these spaces I told them and use a calculator. It’s just substituting values in for variables, that’s pre-algebra. Parents are complaining that it’s too hard, too much, they can’t flip between screens, etc. For a particular student, I printed out the how to slides because mom said flipping back and forth was too much. Everything still color coded. We had a meeting today because this student is failing and I asked them if it helped and they said “I don’t know”. Their mom asked if everything made sense and they said “I don’t know”. What am I supposed to do?! If they say they don’t know to these questions in front of mom, imagine how little of a response I get during class. I don’t know what they want me to do. Everything’s already participation, I just wanted them to do one thing from start to end for accuracy with just the work/questions they came up, not me guiding the entire thing up to punching the numbers into the calculator. I understand this is a special education class, but I always thought the point was to slow down the material and help them through it, not do the entire thing for them on the board and it’ll just be in their writing for points. What else can I do? How else can I encourage independency? Are my standards too high? There are a lot of boxes on the page, but I thought doing it only in class and having it on the board with them would be enough. submitted by /u/UnhappyOstrich8993 [link] [comments]