Deep Fractions Learning: A Core Curriculum of Games, Inquiry, and Collaboration

Project Summary/AbstractThe transition to remote learning for US schools and districts due to COVID-19 has been fraught with challenges for administrators, educators, students, and families. School and district administrators are scrambling to find hardware and software solutions that will work for as many of their families as possible. Educators are using various new technologies for the first time with little training and support. Families are balancing work and life demands with trying to manage their children’s learning. Even with normal classroom instruction, struggling learners often do not benefit from adaptive learning technologies as much as their peers, and these technologies can exacerbate the achievement gap in normal times (Steenbergen-Hu andamp; Cooper, 2013). During this period of remote learning, many of these struggling learners lack self-efficacy, motivation, hardware/internet connectivity, or an appropriate environment for concentrated work, which will inevitably lead to further learning loss. Before COVID-19, there was already an enormous deficit in students’ understanding of fractions. Research shows that students who start middle school with poor understanding of fractions are more likely to struggle with later mathematics (Siegler et al., 2012). In particular, the NIH SEPA program has identified PreK-8th grade math as an area of high programmatic interest (FOA PAR-20-153), because it is such an essential component of being prepared for careers in STEM and health.With this administrative supplement to our original project, Deep Fractions Learning, we propose to adapt the curriculum for use in remote/blended learning contexts and test how the curriculum can be implemented in various settings. More specifically, we will ensure the curriculum software components are accessible using a wide variety of devices, including smartphones, Chromebooks, and low-end tablets. We will adapt the teacher dashboard to help teachers plan across a variety of learning environments: virtual, in-person, and blended. We will use mixed methods to evaluate how teachers use the curriculum in-person, remotely, or in a blended model. With the administrative supplement, we will be able to conduct a comparison group study, where we evaluate the impact of coaching on teachers’ preparedness to teach remotely.Outcomes. The intervention will encourage four direct outcomes for students, namely improved: 1) conceptual understanding of fractions, 2) procedural fluency with fractions operations, 3) mathematical justification, and 4) motivation whether delivered in-person, remotely, or using a blended model.Improving students’ academic outcomes and self-efficacy in the area of fractions during elementary school will promote later success in high school mathematics. Being able to continue high quality instruction and learning during the COVID crisis will ensure more elementary students are better prepared for middle and high school math. Since each additional math class students complete in high school more than doubles the odds of college completion (Adelman, 2006), the intervention has the potential to make a real difference in whether students achieve sustainable careers versus being stuck in low-wage jobs.Project NarrativeFractions knowledge in the fifth grade strongly predicts high school math performance, even when controlling for working memory, whole number knowledge, IQ, reading ability, and demographic factors (Siegler et al., 2012). Intervention in this essential content area will improve students’ math ability in the short and long term, which in turn will lead to several positive distal outcomes, such as greater high school graduation rates and college attendance.