Five Common Mistakes
Made in Math Intervention

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Mistake 1: Starting at the Top

A student who has major skill gaps from previous years is unlikely to fare well in grade level instruction. Unfortunately, too often educators start with just-below-grade-level instruction in hopes of bringing them quickly up to grade level. The temptation is to try to teach objectives that are just under grade level since they seem like the necessary prerequisites for grade-level learning, but often an intervention student is operating significantly behind grade level. It is far more efficient to begin instruction at the level of the student’s lowest skill gap even if it is several levels below their current grade level.

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Mistake 2: Not Differentiating Enough

In an effort to deal with classes that have many students at varying functional grade levels, some instructors will choose to group students by level to better focus small group instruction. But grouping only by functional level doesn’t necessarily put students with the same needs together. The study Which Math Skill Gaps are Students Missing shows that students at the same level display a wide variety of skill gaps. For intervention to be most effective, instruction needs to be precisely tied to a student’s demonstrated skill gaps.

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Mistake 3: Using Teachers as Data Clerks

Data is a necessary pillar of intervention, but when the need to document progress consumes the available time of instructors who would otherwise be working with students, the time spent gathering data detracts from any one-on-one teacher time that students really need. Using a streamlined program to both assess students and monitor progress liberates classroom teachers from spending too much time managing data, especially when real-time data is consolidated into easy to read dashboards. To quote a happy teacher from one of our Ascend Math partner schools, “There’s more of me for my kids instead of me sitting behind a desk… and my aide teaching my class.”

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Mistake 4: Using a Program Not Well Designed for Math Intervention

Precision matters. The math software market is saturated with programs that provide practice problems a select few of these programs offer some kind of instruction or assessment. But what is almost always missing is the ability of a program to automatically identify and address individual student skill gaps without the instructor having to manually make assignments. An effective math intervention software program should automatically assess needs, assign lessons and guide students through their unique learning paths without constant tinkering by the instructor.

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Mistake 5: Not Expecting Better Results

How much progress is enough? If an 8th-grade student began the year at the third-grade level, is it enough to advance that student one grade level by the end of the year? Can you expect a struggling student—one who has slid further behind each previous year—to suddenly begin to grow multiple grade levels in a single year? The answer is an unqualified YES. If a student’s specific skill gaps are accurately identified and addressed in sequence from the bottom up, that student will be armed with both the knowledge they need to make progress in math and a new confidence that they can in fact succeed.

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Five Common Mistakes Made in Math Intervention

Five Common Mistakes
Made in Math Intervention