Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics: Response to Intervention in Middle School

1. Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics: Response to Intervention in Middle School David Chard and Leanne Ketterlin Geller Southern Methodist University

2. Focus of the Presentation • Recommendation 2: Instructional content focused on rational numbers • Recommendation 3: Applying explicit and systematic instruction to teaching mathematical vocabulary • Recommendation 5: Use visual models to help students develop and extend conceptual understanding to abstract reasoning

3. Explicit and Systematic Interventions • Recommendation 3: Instruction during the intervention should be explicit and systematic including clear models and demonstrations for solving problems, guided practice opportunities, student verbalizations, corrective feedback • Level of evidence: Strong

4. Explicit and Systematic Vocabulary • Mathematical vocabulary instruction should be: • Mathematically precise • Developmentally appropriate • Longitudinally transportable

5. Visual Representations • Recommendation 5: Intervention materials should include opportunities for students to work with visual representations of mathematical ideas • Level of evidence: Moderate

6. Role of Visual Representations in Learning • Help students develop strategies for translating word problems into abstract numerical statements • Scaffold students’ depth of understanding

8. Intervention Example • Lesson on equivalent fractions • Is it aligned with the IES Practice Guide recommendations for supporting struggling students? • Focus on rational numbers? • Use of explicit instruction and vocabulary? • Integration of meaningful visual representations?

9. Objective

11. The Initial Problem

14. Defines Division Defines Addition, Subtraction, and Multiplication Focus on Rational Numbers The Real Numbers

15. Representations in Context Concrete Visual Representations