Facts...or FIB?

A majority of my teaching career consisted of working with students who functioned at a Tier 2 and Tier 3 level. It's not that they could NOT learn, they were extremely bright students. It's that they either:

• Entered the US late (lacked years of schooling)
• Had very little home support
• Missed several hours or days of school (therefore Tier 1 instruction)
• Had classes in previous years where their teacher was new or left in the middle of the year (or had a sub for a great deal of the year).

Sometimes I had students who were labeled as Tier 3 and yet only really had behavioral problems; but had been labeled because in previous years they weren't being challenged to their ability, so they acted out. Their behavior (due to lack of classroom management and engagement) caused them to be sent outside the classroom so much, that by the time they got to me, they had missed a significant amount of instruction. Their learning "label" had NOTHING to do with their ability to rise to the challenge.

This made me quite passionate about Tier 2 strategies and caused me to work diligently at strong, effective, engaging Tier 1! I wanted to not only keep students in my class (behavior problem or not), but engage them so something intrinsically triggered them to feel successful. At my small group table, I worked with different strategies to support closing their gaps.

One resource I found quite helpful in remediation with students, was SCAFFOLDING! Breaking my Tier 1 supports down into steps that were feasible for students was a gold mine!

Especially when I encountered students who didn't know their facts! I knew drill & kill was NOT the answer because if they could learn it that way, they wouldn't be struggling with their facts they way they were. 

So, a few things I found effective included: 

1. Distributive property (with representations of course)

For example, if a student struggled with a tougher fact such as their 7s...helping them break that fact down into simpler, more doable steps/fact.s

2. Using what we know (Counting Back)

So if a student didn't know their 9s, we could use their 10s (which they DID know) and help them work backwards. This helped students see a more efficient way to get an accurate answer than skip counting by 3s nine times (and possibly miss counting) or trying to remember their 9s. It also helped them see how facts are related.

3 x 10 = 30

so...3 x 9 = 30 (count back 3)

John Van De Walle also provides some GREAT do's and dont's when it comes to FACT REMEDIATION!

Check'em Out here! Enjoy!