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Photo copyright Richard Finegan, Paraeducator Central

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By Sara Finegan

         I’m teaching a general education math class this year that includes many of my own kids with learning disabilities as well as kids who do not have IEPs.  We’re  about six days behind the other class at the same grade level, and both of us finished the first two units well before the district’s first math benchmark assessment. 

          Greg Roy, my general education colleague, has, as I have said before on this blog, taught me a great deal about math and math instruction.   He and I disagree about mastery, by the way, but that doesn’t impair our ability to collaborate.   He moves at his speed, and I move at a different one,  but we’re both moving forward.

          Anyway, Greg’s a proponent of math routines, and he does them at the beginning of the day as well as at the beginning of a math class.  Routines are great, for several reasons. 

          • First, they provide kids with ongoing practice of previously-learned skills.  My routines always have problems from lessons we have worked on since the beginning of the year – usually types of problems the kids struggled with mightily, so that the skills will become firmly embedded. 

(A recent math routine had a word problem involving adding negative numbers, 2 fraction simplifications, 1 changing from mixed fraction to improper fraction, 1 changing improper fraction to a mixed number, and 2 dealing with multiplying decimals by 10, because my kids bombed that area on the last unit test for some reason, as well as a problem from yesterday’s lesson.)

         The kids get to use their notes and math encyclopedias on the routines, and we go over the results really quickly.  The whole thing takes about 15 minutes each day. 

         • The second benefit of a daily routine is that they give you a snapshot of each student at that moment.  This is particularly helpful as you plan your instruction.  I can tell at a glance how many of the kids in my class have mastered yesterday’s lesson or skill, and what the next steps might be.  Because I make my kids show their work on each routine, I can pinpoint where in the process of problem-solving they are struggling. 

          • Finally they give kids a terrific sense of competence.  As they experience over a series of weeks and months the increasing ease of solving problems using skills they’ve learned, they realize that they can do it, that they are actually good at it. 

         The other day, a parent of one of my general education math students told me that her daughter, who has always struggled with math, is coming home saying “hey, mom!  I’m smart at math!”  This student is the first to raise her hand in my class, the first to want to show the class how she solved a problem, the first to ask questions, and the first to finish her work these days.  It’s not because of me; it’s because every day, when she starts learning math, she is reminded that she’s already got terrific skills.

          Many special educators neglect daily routines, or don’t make their routines as comprehensive as they should be.  We need to recognize that our kids should have multiple opportunities, over a long period of time, to practice newly-mastered skills, or those skills will evaporate like steam after a shower. 

          We need to challenge our kids daily, while at the same time reminding them that they have ability already, or they will never challenge themselves, and never remind themselves of how far they’ve come.

          We need to push, push, push our kids, using all of their strengths, innate and learned, or they will never catch up to their general education peers. 

          In a demanding classroom, mastery is not something to be admired and then ignored; it’s about skill sets we use, reuse, and apply in newer ways on a regular basis.

demanding classroom · high expectations · learning disabled · mastery · math instruction · proficiency · rigor · rigorous instruction · routines · Sara Finegan · skills practice · special education · standards · student monitoring · supports

By Sara Finegan

         There has long been a debate about the issue of teaching to mastery.  When districts and states set up learning modules on a schedule, or a series of standards to meet each year, the inclination of many teachers is to get through as many of them as possible. Some schools and districts place a great deal of pressure on teachers to move forward, and to keep moving through the year.

         I’m not averse to having a set of outcomes to work toward and achieve each year for each grade level. I am against moving forward before our kids really have become proficient at new skills, strategies, and knowledge.

         In a demanding classroom, we don’t get stuck in a routine of doing the same work over and over, and we don’t adhere to other people’s schedules about when learning should be accomplished. Instead, we focus on cementing new skills, step-by-step, concept-by-concept, so that when the foundation of math, science, and other learning is complete, there are as few weak spots as possible.

         If you think about it, if we move kids forward before they really get the previous unit or skill, you are building a house of cards on quicksand. Nothing is going to really stick and the child is going to be aware on a pretty consistent basis that he or she is missing something.

         And what are we teaching kids about learning if we do it this way? It seems to me that we are saying to our children: Learning isn’t about mastering information and strategies; it’s about zipping through lessons to completion rather than to skill.

         Given that one of the major issues for kids with special needs is that they rush through work, getting it done rather than getting it right, aren’t we re-enforcing their own poor learning habits when we teach to completion over quality?

         Many will argue that teaching to mastery takes too much time, and that we don’t have the extra hours or days to ensure that all of our students become proficient at each new lesson.

         I disagree. It isn’t necessarily so. It all depends on how we teach the new information or skills, and what kind and what quality of practice we give our students.

         It also depends on the manner in which we release responsibility back to kids as they work. If we jump too quickly from “I show you” to “you do it,” mastery will take much longer than if we move, increment by increment, from “I show you,” to “I show you again,” to “we do it together,” to “we do it together more,” to “you and a partner do it,, to “try it again, and I’ll be right here,” to “hey, try it and I’ll step back a bit,” to “hey, you can do this!”

         All of that, by the way, doesn’t take place in math, for example, for weeks and weeks; it’s really a matter of days.

demanding classroom · high expectations · learning disabled · mastery · modules · proficiency · rigor · rigorous instruction · Sara Finegan · special education · standards

By Sara Finegan

Sara and Richard Finegan

There’s a misconception among many in the field of education about special education.  To many, “learning disabled” means “unable to learn” or “limited learning capacity.”  The focus is on the “dis” part of “disability” instead of the ability part.  They ask the wrong questions:  “how smart is he?” rather than “how is he smart?”

We’re all guilty of this to some extent, and the result is that in more cases than not, the special education classroom is one where the learning is “dumbed down” and expectations are too low to inspire growth.

When this happens, our students become dependent on us for learning and information rather than independent thinkers.  When we lower our expectations because of assumptions about learning capacity or processing strengths, the kids learn not to think hard, think deeply, or use their strengths.

When kids aren’t taught to rigorous standards and to use and master important skills, they begin to abdicate responsibility for learning.  We cripple them  by modifying our expectations when what we should really be doing is  strengthening them by modifying our instruction to move them forward.

Over the course of the last decade, I’ve taught all kinds of students, from those with emotional disabilities to language deficits, cognitive and processing deficits, autism, and everything in between.  My long-time aide, whose three children are in  general education classes, informs me regularly that our classroom goes deeper and works kids harder than many general education classes in our district.  Certainly, we don’t require less than they do in terms of the quality and quantity of work from our students.

My students work hard, and I expect them to meet the State standards in every subject area.  My job is to figure out for each student how to get them there.

When I talk about having a demanding classroom, I’m not referring to the students.  I’m referring to my teaching.

This blog is intended to share the instructional strategies and practices that we use in our classroom, and to demonstrate how running a demanding classroom promotes the kind of intellectual growth and development of skills that students with mild to moderate learning disabilities need in order to be successful independent learners.

Your comments and questions are welcome as we embark on this journey.

demanding classroom · high expectations · learning disabled · rigor · rigorous instruction · Sara Finegan · special education · standards