Meeting #6

In addition to our meeting this week, Westport sponsored a Family Math and Science night. Several girls helped set up and then stayed for the event. This photo is of Kevani and DeAndrea playing during a break.....sweet!

This week was out of our normal routine. The girls have a unit test on operations with decimals and percents, so we used this as an intensive group study session.

One of the articles we read in our teacher book study this fall was about the differences in success at a major university of Asian students vs. African American students. These students came into their freshman year with equivalent SATs, high school GPAs, parental support, and motivation. However, the African American students performed much more poorly in their mathematics courses their first year in college than the Asian students. The difference was in how they studied. The African American students studied independently, and when they were stuck, they brought their questions to class. The Asian students also studied independently, but then brought their questions and problems to a study group of their peers. When they went to class, they had already mastered the material thanks to the group interaction and were ready to learn the new material presented by the professor.

I'm trying to help my girls learn to work effectively together and to rely on each others' skill and expertise. This was a start. I set it up as a jigsaw - groups were assigned to master a group of problems, then we regrouped and the girls taught their new group members the problems they knew. Today they were only partly successful - they were very hesitant to work with the girls who are on the other team during the school day. I was surprised by this since we've met weekly for over a month. The positive from the day is that they did practice working in flexible groupings and develop a higher familiarity with the material, and we had one more experience developing trust.