When students don’t like maths, students can have trouble getting down to work on it, experience resistance, and have a hard time staying motivated. Most of the Math teachers have such students in their classrooms. Most maths courses progress following the model of teaching theories, explanation of a rule, and practice sheets. Largely disconnected from the “real world”, this approach fails to engage the attention of students who would benefit from another approach: One more application-oriented. On the face of it, maths often appears boring, consisting of completing textbook exercises and worksheets and doing homework with no other aim than to progress to the next chapter, in order to advance in the maths curriculum.
Math teachers of Open Door’s partner schools have long moved on from the traditional approach. The focus has shifted from finishing the curriculum to mastery in Math. We have a very interesting case of three schools where teachers worked to ensure that students of class 8 achieve mastery in ‘Linear equations’ before moving onto next concept.
Teachers of schools A, B and C conducted Open Door’s Learning assessment after completing teaching the Linear Equations. With the help of Open door’s detailed report, they found the number of students who have actually mastered the concept. They found that-
Teachers planned their remediation class after getting the Open Door report and took on average 2 classes to clear the misconceptions.
After the remediation, improvement of 20% was found in these three schools.
What do teachers of these schools say?
“ I have been using Open Door assessments for two years now, the way Open Door pose question to the students have resulted in changing the pattern of the way they think. The quality of questions is the best part of Open Door program. I have seen huge improvements in my class results, the mastery learning program has fitted well with my class schedule.”- Math Teacher, School A
“ I can now start working on misconceptions immediately, I scan the answer sheets in 5 mins and I have instant result of my class. I know the areas I need to re-teach, so I quickly plan my remediation class and get to it. The whole Open Door program is quick and effective.”- Math Teacher, School C
“I am glad that my school decided to take Open Door’s Mastery learning program. My students have improved in Math, my class has become interesting because of the discussions we have on Open Door questions and my class result graph has only been moving in upward direction since Open Door.” – Math Teacher, School B
In a Mastery Learning setting, students get specific feedback about their learning progress at regular intervals throughout the learning of the concept. These feedbacks give students and teachers to work on misconceptions and they get second chance to perform well.