Lesson Plans #1

Math is perhaps the most interactive point in my day. I like math. My students like math (I think). But there is one problem… (to read more click on the link above).

February 27 - NOTE: Each weekend for work I do lesson plans (at least while school is in session) and the task seems to bring together for me a mixture of instructional issues and personal feelings as I <I>contemplate</I> the task of teaching my individual students. This is a weekly blog note designed to examine that mixture of considerations...

Math is perhaps the most interactive point in my day. I like math. My students like math (I think). We interact. Kids come to the board. We do more modeling, more scaffolding it seems than in some other subjects. But there is one problem. And for some reason it is a problem that becomes more obvious to me during math instruction...

A man by the name of Martin Seligman (a Psych Prof at the University of Pennsylvania last I heard and a former President of the American Psychological Association) put a name to the problem back in the 1960's. He called it learned helplessness. It works like this:

1. FAILURE brings with it some level or emotional pain (embarrassment, etc.).

2. Students who do a lot of failing develop the idea that they are not capable of succeeding.

3. Students learn, probably without giving it much thought at first, that since failure seems certain and since pain is a bad thing, there is no reason for TRYING.

4. Students decide that NOT trying is the safest thing to do.

This week I'm teaching the relationship between fractions and decimals. I have to convince my students that one-fourth is the same as 0.25 (not 0.14, as many will guess since there is both a one and a four in the fraction). I have to develop in them the skill of converting the fraction "one-half" into the decimal "zero point five" and the fraction "one-fifth" to the decimal "zero point two" with some level of consistency.

My challenge is two fold:

A. to make them feel that they can succeed, that they ARE making progress.

B. to make it clear that I EXPECT them to make an effort, to do their best.

Otherwise they think that there is no reason to try...