Back in the day drill and practice meant that you were taught a concept together as a class and then you practiced this individually using paper and pencil. With the movement of integrating technology into the curriculum there are numerous ways to practice this concept that you just learned.
In math, when working with multiplication facts, there are many instructional games and software programs for the students to use to gain their attention and motivate them to complete the practice. One program that I have used is FASTTMATH. Students create an account so that their games are specific to them. The students can work on adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing. The software will give the students questions and record the facts that students have mastered and the ones they need more practice. Then when the students go to play the instructional games it was focus on the facts that the students need more practice with. This is a great program to practice because it is specific to each student and will use the facts that they need to practice most during the instructional games.
In an English classroom, students learn about the different elements of a story. Instead of reading a story and discussing these elements students work together in small groups and create a short movie that contains the different elements of a story. They are practicing the skills and concepts in non-traditional ways. These are just a few examples of ways that drill and practice have been improved over the years. Students are more engaged and motivated when it comes to practicing what they have just learned with the use of technology.
Tom Fetherman
Math students can certainly begin to fall behind if they have failed to learn basic math facts such as multiplication facts. At a certain point, teachers must rely on presumed foundational knowledge when determining how quickly to move through new material. If that foundation is missing, the student can be at a significant disadvantage. I believe the drill and practice games, especially in math, have really helped reduce the number of students that develop these issues associated with a weak or incomplete foundation. This may be especially true for students that do not get as much parental support as others. Prior to the availability of this software, some of the work of drill and practice was delegated to the home environment. By giving students more opportunities to do drill and practice in school, where it can now be done efficiently with technology, these students are better served.
ReplyDeleteI have found that many parents believe that all memorizing of facts and mental math strategies should be practiced at school. I have heard it so many times: "Why aren't the teachers having them memorize their facts?" Software that can present instruction and practice based on a pretest are efficient.
ReplyDeleteRiverdeep is another example: Teachers can set up a pretest several students. Then the software can select activities online and in the classroom for the teacher and student to complete. Reports from the software can be printed and sent home for help with communicating strengths and weaknesses to the parents. Plus there is NO RED PEN involved. Evaluation of learning is done instantly.
BTW- Great blog! What a good idea!
-Laura Metz
I love the idea of no red pen! Helps me!!!
ReplyDelete