BP - Skill Drills
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Key elements behind the practice drills:
-Focused repetition -Immediate feedback -An opportunity to adjust and try again |
I first started thinking about using repetitive practice more often when I got tired of hearing my pre-algebra students, when faced with 3x = 5, (or worse, 5x = 3) tell me “You can’t do that. You can’t divide 5 by 3 (or 3 by 5).” I knew perfectly well that we had gone over that the year before, because I had taught most of them in 6th grade! Or when students see (or hear) "What's 4 x 3/5?" or "What's 2/3 of 24?" and want to write out 4/1 x 3/5, or ask "Of means multiply, right?" and THEN write out 2/3 x 24/1... I am always sensitive to when my students are signalling that they need to do more conceptual work, but more and more I am aware of the difference between understanding and recognizing/remembering. I think those take place in different parts of the brain, and I am not sure what kind of communication there is between the two parts. It seems that understanding informs memory and recognition*, but repetition is also an essential nutrient. These drills are a way to feed the recognizing part.
*(When I say recognition, I mean that sudden knowledge, apparently from nowhere, that to find 2/3 of 24 I divide by 3 first ... I don't have to consciously go through the reasoning behind that, or draw a bar model ... I just know it; I recognize that as familiar territory. Just like if I woke up on the bus in a familiar part of town, I would know how to get home without consciously thinking about it, but if I woke up in an unfamiliar part, entirely different parts of my brain would be going to work.)
The collection is a work in progress. The list of topics is a goal for myself; there are some holes.
*(When I say recognition, I mean that sudden knowledge, apparently from nowhere, that to find 2/3 of 24 I divide by 3 first ... I don't have to consciously go through the reasoning behind that, or draw a bar model ... I just know it; I recognize that as familiar territory. Just like if I woke up on the bus in a familiar part of town, I would know how to get home without consciously thinking about it, but if I woke up in an unfamiliar part, entirely different parts of my brain would be going to work.)
The collection is a work in progress. The list of topics is a goal for myself; there are some holes.