Martha's Story - Student/Teacher Conference

Martha is excelling in Ms. Clemen's math class because of differentiated instruction that Ms. Clemens has individualized to meet Martha's learning needs. Join Martha and Ms. Clemens for a special student/teacher conference.

“Ms. Clemens, it’s time for our conference,” Martha said tentatively as she approached the desk.

“Do you have your notebook with your academic graphs,” Ms. Clemens asked pointing to the chair next to her desk.

“Yes, ma’am, it’s right here.” Martha put the notebook on the corner of the desk and two sheets of graph paper dropped to the floor.

“These are perfect, Martha,” Ms. Clemens said looking at her differently colored bar graphs that charted 5 weeks of grades that included weekly mastery tests, two group projects and 3x weekly homework assignments. It was clear from Martha’s graphs and her meticulous pages of grades with reflection notes that she had surpassed her IEP (Individual Education Plan) diagnostic math testing of 7th grade math skills. Martha was excelling in Algebra on the 9th grade level.

Student Reaction

When Ms. Clemens proposed to her 9th grade Algebra class that each student would take responsibility for charting their academic progress in her class, the students were a mixture of emotions and verbal outbursts. For some, the thought of connecting their academic learning with charting their academic grades was a foreign concept.

“Wasn’t that the teacher’s job?” a few students asked in the beginning.

For others, the idea that their work wasn’t a constant comparison with their peers was just plain weird.

“But Ms. Clemens how will everyone know that I’m the smartest student in this class if you don’t make everyone share their math grades,” Laney said holding up her notebook that said “Superior Student” on the front cover.

For Timothy, the idea that he could work on a challenge math project in addition to his classroom work made him feel like he was finally being provided the opportunity to incorporate interest of math into an interesting math project.

“I love my math project on cubes and squares in problem-solving algebra expressions,” Timothy said working on another cube problem that he created to show how the application of a carefully constructed algebraic expression could provide the perfect solution for any problem involving cubes and squares.

For Martha, the ability to work on improving her math skills from a 7th grade level to her current 9th grade level by focusing on closing defined mathematical gaps from her IEP was the highlight of her 5 week progress report. The “B” grade was merely icing on the cake.

Ms. Clemens has incorporated a variety of instructional strategies in her Algebra classroom. By looking at the readiness of her students and aligning student interest with math content and providing cooperative learning experiences in her classroom, Ms. Clemens has created a differentiated learning environment for all of her Algebra math students. For Martha, Laney and Timothy, differentiated instruction in their learning rocks and is quickly closing the achievement gap in math for each of them.