[grade3teacher]

Doing the 4sight tests and checking my open-ended math questions that are a disaster Anyone have a formula or suggestions on how to teach the math open ended questions

this group is going to drive me nuts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[StephR]

Honestly, for me, the thing that makes them easier is exposure. The more the kids do them, the more they are asked to think "that way", the easier they become. I find that in the beginning of the year, my class responses are always terrible, but as the year goes on, they get better.

Once a week, I do a "Two Problem". It is literally two open ended problems that I have them work on. We use the 5-10-15 approach. They have 5 mins to work alone. Then 10 mins to work with a partner. Then there is 15 mins of a debrief. During the debrief, I do "anonymous sharing" where I select a few of the students' answers and put them on the Elmo. The kids tell me what they think the student was thinking as they completed their answer. It is great, as new strategies that I didn't even think of come out.

(I always have a "plant" in there as well, with the correct answer that I completed, just in case no students came up with the correct answer)

At first, the 5-10-15 approach just isn't enough time. But the kids get used to the format and start to speed up. The problems are not SUPER complex, just open ended and open to different solutions (or paths to a solution)

[grade3teacher]

I've been doing the "anonymous sharing" with the reading open response and when we proofread some of their writings. (didn't know it had a formal name)

I think I was just panicing with how horrible these responses were.
Just when you want to folllow up and work on this stuff...there's a program or holiday or something else to interrupt the flow!

[StephR]

I make sure I schedule one Two Problem a week. That way I am sure to get the open ended stuff in, otherwise I know what you mean. The other "stuff" gets in the way.

[yeahimcrazy]

I teach special ed and I found scaffolded teaching works really well. On Fridays, we have PSSA Power Problems. We complete the problems together as a class in the beginning. The kids and I talk through how to solve the problem. While we do the work for the problem, I model how to write an explanation for our work and how to explain in words why we used that strategy/operation/etc. to solve it. I model how to word the explanations, how to determine what the question is asking, how to come up with a strategy for solving the problem, etc. Everything that they need to include in order to get a proficient or higher score in modeled. As the year goes on, the kids do more and more of the talk through and more and more of the modeling as I gradually remove myself from the equation. Before we do state testing, they complete a couple of prompts on their own for practice. This also goes along with the exposure - they are seeing a lot of open-ended problems, they're practicing them, and they're gaining confidence in completing them.

I've had a LOT of success with this method. Last year, every one of my learning support students (and they were a bunch that struggled hard all year) scored proficient on Math and one of them scored advanced (and he was the one that had the most difficulty with number sense in the beginning of the year). I saw similar (though not quite as stellar) results with this method when I taught in the middle school.

I'm doing some similar scaffolded teaching for the reading and writing portions this year and am hoping for improvements in those areas as well.