In Year 7, Mrs MacDonald teaches students to solve basic algebra by the substitution method. In Year 8, the same students are taught by Mr Richards, but his preferred way of teaching algebra is via the elimination method. By Year 9, those students are confused and inconsistent habits have formed as a result.
If, as a student, you ever found yourself in a classroom wondering why concepts you’d been previously exposed to were now being taught in a new way, then you likely know how students often feel today.
In Maths, embedding good practices is critical. If poor habits and inconsistent teaching occur in the early stages, students can end up disengaged, relying on misconceptions, and having issues cemented in their learning for the long term. That’s something that can impact a student’s entire schooling.
There’s an often misconceived notion that if you want to form a new habit, it’ll only take 21 days of consistency.
Habits, however, can be very hard to break. Research has shown that it takes 59 days for people who successfully form habits to reach automaticity. One study even found that some participants took up to 254 days to automate new habits.
If you have a class of students who need to learn specific skills, but you also need to unwind misconceptions formed in earlier teaching, it may take an entire calendar year to do so––which is a tough ask for time-poor teachers.
To put the ramifications of this into perspective, once a student learns something unhelpful in Years 7 or 8, this can be problematic at every level. Think about that when multiplied across an entire school of students.
Those of us in teaching know that the current landscape is extremely challenging. One factor that’s making teaching difficult is highly distracted students.
Companies today are continually competing for youth attention. Whether it’s social media, streaming, gaming, and online shopping––distraction, disengagement, and expectations for immediate gratification are part and parcel of the teaching challenge.
Given that young people are now used to on-demand content that keeps them hooked, it’s essential to provide learning that’s logical and sequential to reduce the chances of confusion.
A laddered approach to learning, where positive habits are formed at the outset and skills are added year-on-year to what’s already learned, is the ideal way to help students succeed both in the early years and into senior Maths.
If this isn’t applied, students effectively start from scratch as they progress through each level. Take subject areas like numbers, algebra, space, measurement, statistics and probability. These flow through from Years 7 to 10 and, finally, into senior maths, so consistency at each transition is vital.
We can see this progression in indices, for example. Indices are introduced to students after they have a solid foundation in multiplying numbers. In Year 8, students learn indices as repeated multiplication. By Year 9, they can extend this thinking to index laws. In Year 10, students learn to combine all of this knowledge and apply it to negative and fractional indices which is an integral skill to understanding rates of change and derivatives in senior maths.
Students ought not to be learning completely new concepts, but rather just expanding their knowledge as they move through the grades.
Providing a consistent continuum in learning, then, helps students to gain knowledge and build upon it year-on-year. This logical approach also helps students to progress more quickly and effectively.
Any habits you want your students to have in the later years of their schooling should be set up now––especially given how long it can take to build habits (and the difficulty of breaking them).
Setting good habits in Year 7 can be as simple as:
This sits alongside the specific need for a singular voice in Maths teaching to boost the chances of students succeeding. One core way to have this voice is via the use of a high-quality resource or bank of materials that can be relied upon for lessons. This can help promote both consistency and reduce lesson planning time.
Teaching consistently means considering not just what students need to learn now, but how the skills they’re learning will relate to the following years. Ultimately, all of this relies on an alignment in teaching; something that school leaders can make a priority in their schools.
We know the early years of Maths count. This is when students are forming habits that will set them up for senior Maths and beyond.
For Maths learners, having a consistent teaching approach throughout their education means they’ll be able to gradually build upon their learned skills, rather than trying to break bad habits when it’s too late.
At Edrolo, we know that the burden for teachers is high. That’s why we’ve developed resources, materials, and tools to help reduce the administrative load. We offer students access to consistent, high-quality materials to boost their learning and enable their success. Explore our catalogue here.
