November 7, 2024 Exit Slip (Inquiry Project Idea)

I have decided to home into the topic of one-on-one assistance in mathematics. As a working title, I have gone with "The Art of Efficient and Effective One-on-One Help".

Initially, I had two other appealing ideas (math phobia on the progressive-conservative education spectrum, and how much we can involve students in a teacher-like role), but I realized that they may be too broad for the time given. During my practicum, I had the chance to observe and help during work times, which meant that a lot of one-on-one help was to be done. To clarify, "one-on-one" is the working term, but I realize that there may be cases such as groups of 3 in a Thinking Classroom where I would have to "three-on-one". For simplicity, I will continue referring to it as "one-on-one" unless there is a better working term.

In any case, the topic interested me because of two reasons: 1) The act of one-on-one helping is something I've always done, and it's always been in a situation where multiple people would need it, and 2) It's very interesting how the one-on-one is a bit of a microcosm of teaching, both in terms of scale and timeframe. By dividing the one-on-one into a beginning, middle, and end structure, the microcosm revealed itself to me. In the beginning, there is an initial assessment of the situation. We check on how much the students already know, and how much we have to work with. We also gauge how much work needs to be done and the goal for the session. There's also some connection-building dynamic that comes into play here. In the middle, this is where the various scaffolding techniques come into play, and builds onto the setup in the beginning. This is a bit like teaching on a more macro scale; even within the one-on-one, there can be a lesson within it with various ways to teach. Finally, the end is when we assess if we can leave students on their own. We would be checking if they truly understood the material well enough to be left alone for something like a hinge question, and ensuring that students will be confident after the one-on-one help. 

I'm still finalizing how I would break down this inquiry topic though; should I focus on just the middle, and leave the beginning and end portions to Inquiry II or III? Should I do a broader approach where I survey all parts of a one-on-one? I initially considered narrowing my scope to just the "middle" and "end", but the "beginning" part is also tempting. Perhaps that could tie in with the "middle" portion. At the very least, I plan on covering at least the "what" and "why" of the strategies that I identify, as well as a discussion and suggestion kind of thing to bring it all together. All in all though, I'm very excited to inquire about this subject. I foresee many observations and interviews coming ahead (in addition to the annotated bibliography stuff which still freaks me out a little, as a computer science undergrad).