Math Education: The Advantage of One-to-One Support

There were a handful of students who did not perform as expected on a recent assessment. I want to understand deeply why this happened so in the next few weeks I'll make the time to let those students take the test again one-to-one with me. As they take the test, I want to watch and listen for the following:

• How do these children read the problems? Do they read carefully, highlighting main words and questions or do they rush the reading?
• How do students interpret the questions and make sense of them? Do they draw a picture to support their understanding, and do they stop to think if their answers make sense?
• How do they calculate? Do they check their work? Do they write down their numbers carefully?
• How do they sustain stamina throughout the test so that they are giving the start of the task the same energy as the end of the task?

In each of these cases, the students have demonstrated good understanding in class, yet their test performance did not match their class performance. I believe that taking the test one-to-one with me will help me to teach these students how to take tests better, and it will also give me great insights as to how to teach these students.

Sometimes the time we set aside to work with a child one-to-one reaps great insights and advantage that empower the teaching/learning program going forward. That's my aim with this approach.