When I first began teaching, I wanted to be well liked by my students. Of course, I want my students to like me even today, but at those early stages of my career, my focus was on making school fun which meant I brought in a lot of great activities. I know students learned in the process, but I wasn’t focused as much on the learning as on the entertainment value. This also meant that things that make learning possible like routines, procedures, and protocols were not a priority.
In my experience, especially now teaching in a low income school where students are struggling to achieve at the same level as their more affluent peers, I have returned to this focus on protocols to make information more accessible to my students. Coming into this year, I had been conducting some graduate research with a focus on science and reading. I was trying to blend my love of science and belief that in low income schools especially, science is treated more as a privilege rather than a right. Because my administrator was focused on increasing reading proficiency, rightfully so, I was on a mission to blend the two together to show that you could teach science and reading in conjunction of one another. This led me to read some research about a program done at another school and the recommendation that a close reading protocol be developed and tested to measure success.
Whereas I did come across some ideas, I began to take to heart this idea of protocols. If my students who come to word problems, extensive directions on state exams, and difficulty unlocking non-fiction texts had a protocol in place to help them tackle these issues, perhaps I could close the achievement gap. This led to me look for and develop a protocol called THINK for non-fiction texts which I will discuss in a later post, and CUBES. CUBES is an already established protocol for math word problems. I have adapted it to suit my needs, but this is how my class defines the acronym CUBES:
C – Circle numbers (we decide later if they are important)
U – Underline the question
B – Box any keywords that helps us decide which operation to use
E – Cross out any EXTRA information
S – Solve and check
It was like pulling teeth at the beginning of the year, however we are halfway through our year and I see my students willingly using the protocol to help them solve. Whereas I haven’t measured the success nor can I see a visible increase in the number of problems my students are getting right, I do know that my lowest learners feel a sense of success being able to do some part of the problem, even if it’s just annotating it. We celebrate the use of CUBES in our class, especially for those learners that haven’t gotten words problems YET.
Yesterday I had an observation lesson. It was a review lesson of word problems, all operations within them, and fractions. Knowing that my students struggle with word problems and that I wanted to generate a more active learning environment, I developed a lesson centered on the discussion of key words in word problems, what they can mean, and a discussion of examples that show how many words can clue us into different operations. I displayed directions on the Promethean board so students could access them again if they forgot what to do (setting clear expectations – a procedure I have come to make a point in each lesson to better improve student learning) as well as sentence frames to guide them in their discussions. I saw students use both tools in addition to other math tools like the glossary of their math practice book. The discussion was lively, hesitant or less involved students were talking in small groups, and more of these inactive learners also participated in whole group discussion. The discussion itself was controversial because the words could easily fit into different categories, so students enjoyed discussing the different ways they could fit into multiple operation type problems.
I plan to use this resource again which is why I decided to make it into an official activity available for purchase. I made it editable so it can be used for different grade levels and content. I want to add different words for each unit word problems we encounter, as well as do a larger review towards the end of the year. We had a lot of fun and we learned in the process.
You can find the editable activity in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.