I have been teaching one student who is an English language learner who came to me at semester how to add and subtract proper fractions for the past three days. Everyday they come in I feel like I am starting from square one each day. I tried teaching by one example at a time, didn't work. I tried teaching using visuals like fraction circles and bars, that failed. The student was getting more and more frustrated, because they weren't moving forward.
I tried a different way. The other students in my class are to graphing linear inequalities. A majority of students in this class speak limited English and/or struggle with mathematics. One of the students finished early and I asked them to help this student.
This was their discussion back in forth in Spanish. It was a great way for both students to move forward mathematically and feel confident going forward.
Link to conversation in Spanish: https://chirb.it/ntn5mD . The sound byte is a minute and a half of the whole conversation which took about 5 minutes.
The girl in the audio does an excellent job of breaking down the problem and used fraction bars to represent the fractions in the problem. You can hear her counting out the fraction bar in the first part of the audio, eventually she moves towards release of instruction where they did a problem together, then she watched as the student did one guiding through the entire process.
I need to find ways of incorporating more peer teaching for my other students, I wonder how I can help guide them through the steps of asking questions and dialogue between each other better?
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