He Did It All Without Knowing!!

Another great moment last week working with a student, Ben (Not his real name, and easier to type!).

Ben is fairly disengaged with school, but a fantastic student who always has a crack with whatever I bring to him.

Rather than go to his class and take him out, we have come up with a little system where I just set myself up elsewhere in the room (they are large learning spaces) before the lesson so that I'm there before the students come in. He always gives me a nod as he enters.

I let Ben settle into the lesson and hear the initial instructions from the teacher, and then he will glance over at me for a heads up to indicate he is ready to come over. With that he just casually leaves his seat and comes and joins me.

The beauty is that he does not feel that he is noticed leaving to come and work with me, the unnecessary attention is removed straight away. His two mates know that he is going to work with me, and they also give me a nod of acknowledgement, as if to say "Thanks for looking after our friend".

The things I do with Ben are often shared by him with his friends afterwards, and last week even his teacher went and sat with him to see what he had been doing and to discuss it with him.

Now, back to the session I had with him.

I started by asking if he wanted to do what the others were doing, and sadly got the reply "I don't get it anyway". I quickly brushed off his reply and started to do all that I could to build his self esteem and highlighting his obvious skills.

It's amazing how much we can learn about someone's mindset just by talking to them. I wanted to get his mind away from what he felt he could not do, to what I already knew he could do.

We both follow Richmond, so we talked a bit about our team, their form (or current lack of it!) and the injuries. Ben started to ask me about sports I had played, and somehow we got talking about some marathons I had run. He asked about my strategies for completing them, and I mentioned how I paid close attention to my heart rate.

More discussion followed about heart rates, and I could already sense that this could be a great opportunity to try an activity with Ben that covered so many of the skills that he still needed some support in.

After finding our own pulse and comparing, I said to Ben "How long would it take you to have one million heartbeats?".

He looked back at me surprised, but already I could see that his mind was ticking over.

"Let's find out" he said.

Success!! Ben was the one leading the investigation now, and not me.

When I asked what he knew about heart rates he said that it usually gets spoken about in "Beats per minute"

So, when I asked if we should time each other for a minute, he quickly responded with "Let's do it for 30 seconds and double it, No, 15 seconds and multiply by 4 as that will be quicker"

We did this, and from there we calculated 2 mins, 5 mins, 10 mins, 30 mins etc right up to a week.

All the while he was able to refer back to rates for different time periods and add, multiply and subtract to find out what he needed.

A few times I suggested something, to which Ben would reply "Doing it this way will be quicker". Ben was able to record his information in such a way that he could find measurements that he needed, as he put it in a table with clear headings.

This was done off his own bat, not as a suggestion from me.

A few weeks ago, Ben showed that he had a bit of trouble knowing how to do multiplication and subtraction examples,and deciding which one to use at which time, but as today had a rich context he was able to really apply himself and utilise many of the strategies we had been covering. Everything was coming together beautifully.

Now the best part.

Rather than trying to work out the precise answer in an equation, he began to estimate beforehand so that he knew roughly what his answer might be. By highlighting to him how impressed I was to see this he just ploughed on with extra gusto!

Ben eventually worked out to the second how long it would take him to have one million heartbeats, but what we celebrated wasn't this as much as the fact that he utilised so many skills and strategies and persevered with the task.

I saw so much more than someone working out a number of equations just to find an answer. He really knew that each answer had some bearing on the next phase of his task, so he applied himself with amazing patience and self belief.

There was intent and purpose to what he was doing.

At the end I asked him to look at his 'scribble page', and see how much he had done. He could see that he had worked through nearly 30 equations and was shocked to see how much he had done.

"I didn't realise I had done so much" was his shocked response.

To finish off, I showed him how much maths he had covered in just that one task, and that he was now capable of solving a multitude of similar tasks as he knew how to scaffold his work and make use of the many skills he undoubtedly has.

The look on his face as he shared his results with his two mates and his teacher was priceless, they were as proud of him as he was of himself

And as I was of him.