Tag: yogurt

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Meeting Needs Part 2

In the past year I have helped two 7th grade students who are categorized as twice exceptional (2e). Both had more severe math anxiety that impacted their performance and masked their ability. When we started both were working on elementary school level math. Within a couple of months both were working on algebra. (Both had gaps but I was testing their ability by test running higher level math with them.)

As I shared in a previous post my approach is to focus on meeting needs. I want to elaborate on this. My secret is I listen to the student… In other words, the student drives the instruction.

Here’s an analogy. You go to a frozen yogurt or ice cream store and they offer you a sample. You try a couple then go with the one you like. That’s what I do. I try out different types of instruction (samples of the ice cream) and the student tells me (verbally or by the response to the instruction) which one they want. That is the I in IDEA and in IEP.

icecream samples

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Unit Rates

yogurt unit rates

Real life applications in of themselves will not make a concept real for many if not most students with special needs. They likely need the concept broken down into more concrete form (CRA).

For this problem I would fudge the numbers and have 42 oz at $6 (7 oz per dollar) and a 5 oz at $1. I would have a photo of a “42” oz yogurt and cut it into 6 pieces and have 6 $1 bills and match each yogurt piece with a dollar bill to help students visualize the unit rate.

I took this photo tonight at Big Y and threw together this idea on the fly.

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