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Skill focus: Handwriting
Grade level focus: K or 1
Description:
This paper has colored lines to help students know where to start and stop.

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Skill focus: Writing Enrichment
Grade level focus: Grade 2-3
Description:
Writing prompts/story starters for your students to use.

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Skill focus:
Grade level focus:
Description:
You can also add files, photos and links

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Skill focus: Various Math Intervention Ideas
Grade level focus: K-5
Description:
Strategies range from Peer tutoring, Fact Retrieval, Cover-Copy-Compare

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Mathematics has potential to inspire wonder and foster creativity. It is far deeper than counting and arithmetic; math can provide irrefutable proof of grand ideas and predict new scientific discoveries.

As educators usher in a new generation of future problem solvers, a challenge to overcome today relates to current math proficiency levels. But fear not! No matter where students are on their math journeys, there are strategies educators can use to maximize and accelerate their growth.

What Is Math Intervention?

In the broadest terms, math interventions are ways to help students who are behind in their math learning. However, for many educators, the meaning of math intervention is the support provided to students who are two or more grade levels behind in a math topic. Many schools offer dedicated classes-frequently with fewer students and more than one teacher-to support students who would benefit from intensive math intervention.

Tier 2 Intervention and Tier 3 Intensive Intervention

The strategies described in this article can serve as Response to Intervention (RTI) math strategies. However, they do not differentiate among the needs for a multi-tiered system of supports for interventions within the core classroom (Tier 1), as supplemental intervention through differentiated instruction (Tier 2), or as intensive intervention that can occur in either the core classroom or in a traditional pull-out classroom (Tier 3).

Tier 1: Students receive research-based instruction within their core classroom.

Tier 2: Students receive targeted supplemental intervention using differentiated instruction.

Tier 3: Students receive individualized, intensive intervention within their core classroom or in a pull-out model.

All students have different learning needs. What works for one student may not work for another, and what works for a particular math skill or problem may not work for another. Moreover, the supports that your students need may look different depending on classroom capacity or the organization of specialized intervention support within your school or district. Feel free to try the ideas below, adapting them to your individual students.

Planning Lessons for Students Who Are Struggling

Explore this list of math intervention strategies before giving a lesson, as they can be used in whole-class or small-group math instruction and guide what problems to use in the first place.

Strategy 1: Account for Student Strengths

So your student doesn't like math? Or maybe doesn't seem to make any progress with the topic you're teaching? Well, what do they like? Account for the whole student. Ask about their family, hobbies, and entertainment. Maybe there's a class they particularly love or even a previous math topic that interested them. Consider creating an interest survey where students share their feelings about math, which can extend to what interests them outside of math, too. Look for ways to connect what your students love to the math topic that's confounding them.

This can also be an opportunity to introduce students to new ideas and subjects that they didn't even know would be of interest to them. If your math program includes videos or simulations, encourage your students to explore. If it doesn't, there are still plenty of free options online. Listen to your students and figure out what personally engages them so you can tap into what they care about.

This isn't a simple task for you, the teacher! You may need to research details about your students' interests and seek out the mathematical connections. It may help to browse our full library of free resources, including math activities that relate to fashion, sports, business, and art, to name a few.

What works for one student may not work for another, and what works for one math topic may not work for another.

Strategy 2: Use Schema-Based Instruction

Word problems can leave students across all grade levels wondering where to even start. The combination of parsing English and manipulating mathematical concepts can be daunting, especially for multilingual learners. One evidence-based strategy is to create a schema, or an underlying blueprint or structure that you can introduce students to and continually revisit when working through word problems. For example, consider the following word problems:

Alice has 81 fish that she has to place evenly into 9 buckets. How many fish are in each bucket?

Rosario wants to hang 25 artworks into 5 galleries so that every gallery has the same number of artworks. How many artworks go in each gallery?

A pet shelter has 18 cat treats that it wants to give out evenly to the 6 cats in the shelter. How many treats will each cat get?

All of these problems can be described using a schema that describes the general concept of division:

Total ÷ Groups = Number per group

Once you have a schema, you can refer back to it to help students illustrate problems and adapt new word problems to the same schema. It may help to draw the schemas, create posters for the ones that appear most frequently, or-if your students are ready-see if they can define their own schemas.

Strategy 3: Peer Tutoring

Want to know one of the best ways to learn math? Teach it. Seriously; ask math teachers of all stripes, and they can attest that having to explain an idea to others makes them learn it more soundly than they ever thought possible. This can be a scary strategy to employ when the students don't seem to have mastered a concept yet themselves, but plenty of learning can happen through the teaching process. Having students talk to each other about math fosters rich math conversations. It also helps students identify classmates who are strong counterparts in terms of helping them when they're stuck.

Pair students up and have them teach a concept to each other. Be sure to give them tools to tutor another student even if they're struggling themselves. For example, you could provide (or have students create!) cards with numbers, equations, images, or vocabulary terms. The "tutor" can select the cards, and the "tutee" can sort them and form rules that describe all of the cards in each group. After 5-10 minutes, have students reverse roles: the tutor becomes the tutee. Not only does this strategy improve math understanding for both students; it bolsters confidence and attitudes about math, to boot!

If your students could use some practice with division, try out the card sort activity below, which comes from Math 180, our math intervention solution for students in Grades 5 and up.

Strategy 4: Practice Fact Retrieval

Part of what stops a lot of students from progressing in math is frustration over not knowing and constantly getting stuck on math facts. After all, if you can't quickly add and multiply, how can you be expected to solve larger problems that rely on those facts?

Modern evidence suggests that math facts should not be the focus of lessons and are improved through general practice. However, some evidence shows that setting aside some time for practicing math facts-around 10 minutes per day-can reap large dividends in terms of confidence in math class and growing in math competency beyond fact fluency. There are endless ways to practice math facts with students, including video games, board and card games, and the strategy that follows: Cover-Copy-Compare.

Fact fluency can also be thought about in the context of problem solving. When solving math problems, don't quickly correct an arithmetic error and move on. Instead, spend time on it and have students discuss their thought processes. Consider employing Number Talks, five- to fifteen-minute conversations around computation problems that are solved mentally, which are great at getting students to work naturally on their fact fluency and speed of recall.

Strategy 5: Cover-Copy-Compare

This is an intervention that offers a specific evidence-based activity to practice fact retrieval. In preparation, create a worksheet with around 10 math facts. Have the list of sums or products (for example) lined up along one side of the paper. Let students study the facts and, when they're ready, cover the lined-up numbers and try to recreate the list. When they're done, compare the list they generated to the original list.

Mark the facts correct or incorrect. If any are incorrect, repeat the procedure of covering, copying, and comparing until all the facts are solved correctly. This task helps create a definable and manageable goal for students-get all of the facts correct-no matter their current math abilities. You can differentiate the task by having students answer orally instead, which has the added benefit of being quicker. This routine improves math accuracy both across general education and special education, and can apply to math ideas beyond just math facts! For example, this strategy could be used to build fluency with greater than or less than symbols.

Strategies to Use While Teaching

Try this list of math interventions while giving a lesson, as they can be tools to help individual students-or even full classes!-who seem to be stuck on a problem.

Strategy 6: Employ Metacognitive Strategies

Research has shown time and time again that if you can get students to think critically about their own mathematical thinking, there is an opportunity to grow. On the surface, the problem may seem to be an understanding of math concepts, but the deeper problem may in fact be the students' mindsets.

Encourage students to tell their own math stories. What was math like in their household and in previous classes? Intentionally draw your students' attentions not just to what the math concepts are, but how they feel about them. Have students pause to reflect on how they feel and what thoughts are crossing their minds. Are they thinking thoughts like "I'll never get this" or "There's nothing I can do about it?" Present ways to combat this thinking, such as taking a break, asking for help, or brainstorming a new strategy to try.

Strategy 7: Verbalize Thought Processes

Research shows that the most successful math interventions are explicit and systematic. One way to do that is to verbalize thought processes. In other words, as students think about how to solve a problem, probe them to say what they are thinking aloud. It is important here to listen patiently and without judgment even if their mathematical language is inexact or their reasoning is imperfect. When you hear the full process, it can help you identify specifically how to intervene. Perhaps they understand a larger idea but get stuck on the arithmetic. Or perhaps they understand what a problem is asking but shut down as soon as they encounter a fraction.

It can work the other way, too. As you solve a problem, verbalize your thought process. Let students see the steps you take to work through a problem and model precise mathematical language and reasoning.

Strategy 8: Fast Draw

Fast Draw is a learning strategy devised by Cecil D. Mercer and Susan P. Miller around 30 years ago to help students with learning disabilities in solving math word problems. The letters of Fast Draw are a mnemonic for the steps:

Find what you are solving for: Look for the question mark and underline what you are trying to solve for.

Ask yourself what information is given: Read the whole problem and look for what information is already provided.

Set up the equation: Write the equation with numbers and symbols in the correct order.

Tie down the equation: Say out loud what the operation is and what it means. If you can, solve the problem. It may help to draw pictures.

Discover the sign. Find the sign and say it out loud.

Read the problem. Say the problem out loud.

Answer the problem, or draw.

Write the answer to the problem.

Here's a resource from James Madison University that provides details on each step, along with examples. Students struggling in mathematics often become passive when faced with word problems, and Fast Draw offers a concrete strategy that can help them become active and work through word problems on their own. The strategy not only helps bolster math achievement, but math attitudes, too, especially for students with learning disabilities.

Strategy 9: Use Multiple Representations

Multiple representations are important well beyond math intervention. They help students perceive math concepts in different ways and form important generalizations. However, they can serve a more targeted purpose for a student who needs targeted help. Showing math representations in different ways gives students a variety of mental models to consider, making comprehension more likely. In other words, it helps students "see" the math, even when one representation confuses them. The card sort activity from Strategy 3: Peer Tutoring is one way you can prepare specific multiple representations for students to compare.

Even concepts that seem simple to you can be complex to your students. Since everybody without visual impairments is a visual learner, lean into multiple visual representations to demystify ideas. But be intentional in which representations you show. If the representations are hard to interpret or come across as disconnected, you risk confusing students more!

***
Looking to unlock mathematical learning in the students who need it most? Explore our math intervention programs for students in Grades 5-12.

Math 180 is a program designed to boost math achievement for students in Grades 5 and up. Explore the ways it's been used in classrooms and how it can help all students accelerate their math learning.

Brenda Konicke
Director of Professional Learning at Math Solutions

Try these strategies out to optimize your small group instruction time in the math classroom.

Richard Blankman
Shaped Editor

Get the truth about fixed vs. growth mindsets and try our strategies to foster an environment where students feel empowered to learn.

Rachel L. Schechter, PhD
VP Learning Sciences, Learning Sciences and Research Advisory Board Chair

Jessica McKeown, PhD
HMH Senior Learning Scientist, Math and Science

Get our free Math Intervention eBook today.

Angela White

Jennifer Corujo
Shaped Editor

Dr. Shane Templeton
Foundation Professor Emeritus, Literacy Studies, University of Nevada, Reno; Into Reading Program Author

Richard Blankman
Shaped Editor

Angela White

Jennifer Corujo
Shaped Editor

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These math intervention strategies for struggling students provide lessons, activities, and ideas to support Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 math students...

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Skill focus: Phonics
Grade level focus: K-2 or readers with decoding issues
Description: This will provide you with where decoding skills may be breaking down.

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Skill focus: Phonics
Grade level focus: Readers who are struggling with decoding
Description: This might provide some instructional moves to take students who are struggling with decoding.
You can also add files, photos and links

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Skill focus: spelling and sight words
Grade level focus: K-5
Description: systematic approach to practicing spelling and sight words

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Skill focus: math problem solving
Grade level focus: 3-5
Description: Work with a student to create a unique self correction checklist when solving math problems.

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Skill focus: math facts
Grade Level focus: 2/3-5
Description: Self led activity to improve mastery of math facts (see attachment for more details)

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Skill focus: identifying main idea
Grade level focus: 3-5
Description: utilize a graphic organizer to build main idea identification and understanding

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Skill focus: reading fluency
Grade level focus: 1-5
Description: student reads through a passage repeatedly to improve errors and increase fluency

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Skill focus: Reading Foundational Skills
Grade level focus: K-5
Description: a list of prompts by text level to help intervene during reading instruction

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A Tool for Supporting Moving Readers Up Levels - 09.13.2021