The following series of activities focuses on the affective numeracy competencies: confidence, autonomy and self-awareness.
Building Confidence, Autonomy and Self-awareness
One practitioner shared the way she would look at the development of a learning process with emphasis on building learner confidence, autonomy and self-awareness.
Begin with an open-ended assessment:
• Where are you now?
• What do you need to learn?
Set goals together.
Choose resources together – the wider the scope of materials, the greater the test of knowledge.
Encourage practice, practice, practice.
Encourage and facilitate self-assessment.
Provide opportunities to teach others – through presentation, through explanation.
Affirm a shift in affective numeracy competencies, that is, personal growth in confidence, autonomy (independence), and self-awareness as a learner.
Building Autonomy
Consider a learner who is a registered apprentice preparing for a test.
What do you do?
1. Start with an open-ended assessment. Get to know the learner’s background and experience, in addition to determining what skills might be needed.
2. Draw out needs and gaps:
- numeracy skills such as operations (whole numbers, fractions, decimals); conversion in measurement; word problems
- familiarity with various types of test questions, i.e. multiple choice
- test-taking strategies
- language skills to support numeracy learning
3. Generate a learning plan.
4. Develop relevant activities, including review, self-assessment activities.
5. Select appropriate materials specific to apprenticeship trade, in addition to literacy and numeracy resources.
6. Support through tutoring and weekly meetings.
Building Confidence
What do you do?
- Start with assessment of student’s math skills (where he/she is weak and strong).
- Show learner the list of skills he/she likely needs to improve.
- Let learner decide where to start with those skills.
- This might give the learner a sense of confidence and maybe help to lessen “math anxiety.”
- Possible Problem #1. Math is a fairly logical subject. What if a learner chooses to start at Step 4, not knowing that Steps 1, 2 and 3 are necessary first?
- In response to Problem #1, the instructor could start at Step 4 and “gently” lead the learner to the realization that Steps1, 2, and 3 are necessary first.
- Possible Problem #2: Suppose a learner chooses not to choose any step?
- Possible solution to Problem #2: The instructor chooses Step 1, teaches it and then again offers learner choice on the next steps.
Math Anxiety "back to the books..."
Anxiety is a major factor... N -O- T Math P-L E-A-S-E!
What do you do?
- Quick math “assessment”, two-pager
- Sit with learner to work on page 1
- Page 1: addition, subtraction and multiplication – check together!
- Once done, hand out page 2.
- Page 2: division, fractions, decimals and percents (these are often forgotten or rusty skills - squeaky! creaky!! scary!!! They need some ‘oil’.)
When assessment is done together as an activity, this helps build confidence which in turn lessens learner anxiety.
Building Confidence
Practice:
- Start with ‘do-able’ exercises
- Reinforce success
- Understand process exercises with physical things, i.e. beans
Communication:
- Write in long-hand what had been done in formula form
Teaching/learning:
- Teach others what has been learned
- Volunteer in learning centre, e.g. as a peer tutor
Skill-based/problem solving:
- Apply skills to other learning activities, i.e. apply problem-solving in math to problem-solving in life
Confidence Includes Self-awareness
What do you do?
- Build on previous successes such as completion of different modules and the math areas, e.g. fractions, decimals, area.
- Develop a good, neat, organized notebook or journal (instead of loose scraps of paper easily lost).
- Go slowly, success does not happen overnight. It’s a long-term effort.
Activities