It was good to see Elijah again after winter break. He shared that he had a fun break.
We began the session with a multiplication review. We used the on-line program, Multiplication.com, to do a quick review with the digital flash cards. He is having difficulty with multiplication of 2 digits and is resorting to counting on his fingers. I recommend that he practice daily until he masters these. A couple of quick sessions a day would be very beneficial. There are many on line games to help students practice this as well. The math standard, MAFS.3.OA.3.7, calls for students by the end of Grade 3, to know from memory all products of two one-digit numbers. This is straight recall and a matter of memorization, so I will review them on a regular basis when he comes for a session until he demonstrates mastery.
Today, I administered Session 1 of the FSA Practice Assessment. He seemed to struggle with reading the directions and understanding which operations to use to solve the problems. Session one results demonstrated that he could understand and solve the straight computational problems but became confused by multi-step word problems. In addition, he struggled with rounding, units of measure, and using tables to solve problems. I will ensure that the materials we use align with the testing protocols on the FSA so that Elijah gains some familiarity with the types of questions he can expect on the spring tests. We will practice problems similar to those found on Session 1 when we meet next week and also review the English Language Arts practice test.