The Volunteer Learning Program - VLP - is part of Adult High School Completion, Department of Special Services, Fairfax County Public Schools. VLP is committed to helping its adult learners achieve their academic and life goals, and to providing its tutors with a rewarding and well-supported volunteer experience.
Have you been reading about the Common Core Standards? Recommendations have been made for their adaptation for adults. See the new section on Common Core Standards under "Helpful Resources."
Under New GED Test 2014 and also under Technology Skills for Online Tests and Texts, a long list of websites for online test-taking practice, not only for the GED but for all online testing such as the SOLs.
What has helped your learner get the basics down? Overcome a math phobia? Move on to more advanced math? Please identify what your learner needed, how you helped, and what resources or materials you used.
Analogies are very helpful - particularly ones that the learner can relate to. Money works very well to for arithmetic and decimals. Slices in a pizza pie are perfect for explaining fractions.
I find that creating a “factoring tree” works best; especially for those who are not too comfortable with their multiplication tables. Most students use the calculator to help them find the factors. The tree helps them keep track of the factors found and how they got there.
I'm just beginning, but in my search for materials I Googled and found a whole lot of websites with math practice materials and more. Many are geared to home-schoolers, and provide worksheets galore, as well as tips on teaching various concepts. Here's one: http://www.homeschoolmath.net/. There are also several math game sites, though you need to be aware that many of the games pressure players to work at high speed, so may be best for review of fairly well-learned materials. Try games yourself before giving them to learners. Here's one site with many games: http://www.mathplayground.com/games.html
Posted as requested by Lori, this was my synopsis of the first meeting with my learner.
Had the first meeting with ####### tonight, he seems like a great guy and it went very well. I wanted to get a feel for where he was and he got there, so we talked for awhile about his life. Then we talked about his education, or lack of, and about his experience with math.
Like you described, he seems to be completely lacking in a solid foundation, although he does understand basic addition and subtraction. I went through his thinking process on a few of the sample problems that he got wrong on the test you gave him, and he was able to get it right without help the second time around. He said he was nervous and embarrassed when you gave him the test initially, and didn't want to rely on his crutches like counting on his fingers, so he just guessed. I'm kind of amazed he could learn the process for carrying and borrowing without really understanding what was happening behind the scenes.
I think we need to start all the way at the beginning, he doesn't know the written words for numbers, so his first work is to learn to write and understand the english words for 0-9. He also is counting in his head in Spanish, so I'm going to try to encourage him to count in English to get used to the saying and thinking about the words. I'm also going to break up the multiplication tables into very small pieces. He understands the concept of multiplying by 0 and 1, so we're going to work on multiplying by two until it is automatic. He could write out the full table for the twos, but they aren't automatic yet and he needs repetition.
He is confidant in his ability to learn in small chunks, and he is very motivated, I think we just need to work on systematic learning of very small chunks. We only worked an hour, and I don't think in the beginning our sessions will be much longer than that until we develop some foundation to build on.
I think he's intelligent and adaptable, he's just been convinced that he can't do math. In his jobs he's been forced to learn large menus in a week or two, which is impressive. If we can set a foundation, he's going to surprise himself at what he can do.
My learner is uncomfortable with word problems. I found it useful to have the learner answer word problems with a complete sentence. This causes the learner to think about the question and the answer in the same context.
Analogies are very helpful - particularly ones that the learner can relate to. Money works very well to for arithmetic and decimals. Slices in a pizza pie are perfect for explaining fractions.
ReplyDeletePrime Factoring
ReplyDeleteI find that creating a “factoring tree” works best; especially for those who are not too comfortable with their multiplication tables. Most students use the calculator to help them find the factors. The tree helps them keep track of the factors found and how they got there.
I'm just beginning, but in my search for materials I Googled and found a whole lot of websites with math practice materials and more. Many are geared to home-schoolers, and provide worksheets galore, as well as tips on teaching various concepts. Here's one: http://www.homeschoolmath.net/.
ReplyDeleteThere are also several math game sites, though you need to be aware that many of the games pressure players to work at high speed, so may be best for review of fairly well-learned materials. Try games yourself before giving them to learners. Here's one site with many games: http://www.mathplayground.com/games.html
Posted as requested by Lori, this was my synopsis of the first meeting with my learner.
ReplyDeleteHad the first meeting with ####### tonight, he seems like a great guy and it went very well. I wanted to get a feel for where he was and he got there, so we talked for awhile about his life. Then we talked about his education, or lack of, and about his experience with math.
Like you described, he seems to be completely lacking in a solid foundation, although he does understand basic addition and subtraction. I went through his thinking process on a few of the sample problems that he got wrong on the test you gave him, and he was able to get it right without help the second time around. He said he was nervous and embarrassed when you gave him the test initially, and didn't want to rely on his crutches like counting on his fingers, so he just guessed. I'm kind of amazed he could learn the process for carrying and borrowing without really understanding what was happening behind the scenes.
I think we need to start all the way at the beginning, he doesn't know the written words for numbers, so his first work is to learn to write and understand the english words for 0-9. He also is counting in his head in Spanish, so I'm going to try to encourage him to count in English to get used to the saying and thinking about the words. I'm also going to break up the multiplication tables into very small pieces. He understands the concept of multiplying by 0 and 1, so we're going to work on multiplying by two until it is automatic. He could write out the full table for the twos, but they aren't automatic yet and he needs repetition.
He is confidant in his ability to learn in small chunks, and he is very motivated, I think we just need to work on systematic learning of very small chunks. We only worked an hour, and I don't think in the beginning our sessions will be much longer than that until we develop some foundation to build on.
I think he's intelligent and adaptable, he's just been convinced that he can't do math. In his jobs he's been forced to learn large menus in a week or two, which is impressive. If we can set a foundation, he's going to surprise himself at what he can do.
Word Problems
ReplyDeleteMy learner is uncomfortable with word problems. I found it useful to have the learner answer word problems with a complete sentence. This causes the learner to think about the question and the answer in the same context.