One of the things that I love about math is the patterns. They are, of course, everywhere. It might seem like repetition and drilling are contrary to the joy and wonder that come with seeing patterns, but repeated exposure to patterns is what makes them so cool. It’s always exciting to see that lightbulb go off when a student is able to see a pattern and make a connection. However, those observations don’t come easily to all students.

Repetition can provide the opportunity for students to make friends with patterns that don’t seem obvious at first. I think that teaching algorithms can be demonized, when there are students who need not only those methods but also memory tools for accessing those methods. It’s tough for those of us who easily make sense of numbers or words to understand a world in which those educational tools are confusing. It’s tough as a teacher to look at a problem that clearly jumps out at me in terms of solutions and to realize that my student is clueless as to where to begin.

One of the strategies that I have begun to implement with my math students who struggle is to provide several similar problems on the same work page or screen. Rather than working through one problem from start to finish, I work through all three at once, completing the first step in each example before moving on to the next steps. This allows my students to see the similarities in the problems, so that they can better observe how the starting actions for all of the problems are the same. I am beginning to see the algorithms stick. Of course, this is not where we will stay, but the letters and numbers on a page become a little easier to navigate, then we can tackle the application as we go.

It might seem like a basic approach, and I certainly would not have explored this path as easily in my pre-COVID classroom. The move to mostly digital instruction and paperless work has demanded creativity, which for me, includes ways to communicate through a screen, whether to my hybrid students in the classroom or my virtual students on a computer. Not being limited by paper has enabled me to be liberal in the space I use, which has also allowed for creativity in completing exercises.