Interventions at Work in the Classroom

My ten year old came home last week with a very low grade on his multiplication homework. He was frustrated. He is a people-pleaser, has a good attitude, and works hard. Unfortunately, he still could not get his 2-digit and 3-digit multiplication problems done correctly.

I sat down with him and for the next 90 minutes took him step by step through the incorrect problems. We discovered that he was missing an entire step in his approach to the problems. We corrected the step and practiced a number of items. The next day he took the chapter test and received a very commendable 85%. He was ecstatic.

This was a great scenario with a happy ending. However, in a classroom with 30 students learning 5 subjects, it most likely would not have happened. When I was in school and I received a low grade on an assignment, I was told to go reread the chapter and do the work again. Sometimes this helped, sometimes it did not. In my opinion, interventions and reteaching needs to be tailored to help students find their mistakes and figure out how to fix them.

How can a teacher with a classroom full of students sit down and help a student pinpoint their errors? One new tool which I have found very useful is feedback based on student mistakes. One great example is shown in the graphic below.



Students typically make a few common mistakes when learning how to add decimals. Some of the most common are forgetting to line up the decimals, failing to regroup, and performing the wrong operations. The answer is extremely predictable for each of these mistakes. By connecting a feedback comment to the mistake a computer can alert the child as to where they went wrong in solving their problem. They can then correct their own work.

What kind of tools or interventions do you think work best for your children or students?

Karyn Nochumson M.A.