I teach the kids that really, really hate math. The ones I teach in Investigative Geometry, I’ve taught for 3-4 years. We build great relationships and have a pretty good time.

This year, my 1st hour class (Algebra A) has several students who hate school and hate authority. I asked one student what his goal was after high school and he said his goal is to draw disability. I have students in that class who would play with Algebra Tiles all day long, unless I ask them to do something specific with them. Then, they don’t want to touch them.

I try to relate to them, but then I have to be careful how much I relate. For example, I have revised some word problems in the past:
Johnny was sentenced to 18 months for possession. Due to good behavior, he only served 40% of his sentence. How long was Johnny in jail?

My geometry students learn trig ratios with:
Some Old Hippie, Came Around Here, Tripping . . . Over Apples . . .
with the strategically placed pause, student insert their own words, and they remember their ratios.

I never try to be the “cool” teacher. I try to be the dependable teacher that they can feel comfortable with. So far, it is okay, but I know there has to be a better way. . .

I’ll keep reading, see what comes up.

I appreciate the dilemma. It’s a personal call for everyone. If someone had a “one best way,” all these blogs would be moot, eh?

My favorite solution, when I was working in a Job Corps (great kids, rotten program) was basically to casually ask each kid, in some context other than a test, if he could tell me, say, what 84 * 9 was. Then I’d watch him or her do it. If the kid could do it, that was that. I never needed to see his/her work for that kind of problem again.

That’s not always feasible, I know. But it was a Job Corps, and the way that rotten program worked, was that it would farm kids who normally the program wasn’t mandated to take, like from prisons, crack-houses, etc. It was a joke.

So there was a high percentage of kids who might have been tempted to cheat, because Job Corps is a kind of twisted system that sets kids up for failure. These kids had every reason not to trust me or anything about the place.

After a short time in my class, I think all but the most incorrigible kids felt they could trust me. I felt I could trust them on tests, too. Not that they’d snitch on each other (”snitches get stitches” was the operating mantra in that place) but I think they were operating on this premise:

If they cheated on my quizzes, and that got them out of my class into the G.E.D. class, where they’d be learning “higher” things, they’d be stuck in a G.E.D. class where they were sure to fail. And that would devastate them, and they wouldn’t get too many more chances.

On the other hand, if they failed in my class, I knew one thing - the kid was honest. I’d give them more credit for being honest than I would for passing a stupid math quiz. And, of course, once they failed, we could talk, and pinpoint the problem, and work on it.

So maybe some kids would fail some quizzes. But they would be fast quizzes, without them having to show work, which many (most?) kids find distracting or besides the point. The upside was that they didn’t resent my quizzes. You can’t pay for that!

Another thing I tried, with mixed success, is to insist that every question that was answered be correct. I was teaching basic math, not rocked science. If there was any problem at all for a kid to do, say, 369/27, then there was a serious problem.

One more thing I used, when I subbed at things other than math, was, when I had to give multiple choice quizzes, I’d add three extra boxes -
How sure are you of your answer?
a) not too sure
b) pretty sure
c) very, very sure
You can learn a LOT about which kids fool themselves and want to fool you from that. It’s about my favorite testing scam.

As for grading standardized tests, usually you have to do what the testmaker tells you to do - give partial credit, check how they do it, etc. I hate those things.

All in all, I think the only way to assess basic math skills is to give quick, short quizzes, give no partial credit, or look at any work, and then discuss each wrong answer with each student individually.

With the back- and soul-breaking workload teachers have nowadays, I don’t know if any of these Ideas are feasible. That’s why I quit Job Corps and won’t teach in public schools.

If you can get away with the extra three questions, I’d give them a try, though.

I don’t know if any of this will be helpful. I’m aware that every situation is different. Those are just some things that either worked for me, or I amused myself with.

All the best!

Brian

P.S. - What kind of place do you teach in? Ages? (Just curious!)

If you have a better idea for assessing student work, without requiring them to show work, please let me know.

Dunmire