So lately, I’ve been getting quite a few questions about how to help struggling students. Now, these are the students that are seen as “behind” or “not getting it.” 

Over a week ago, I offered a free webinar, and during the Q&A portion of that webinar, there were so many questions about how people should structure their math time and how do we incorporate Number Sense activities when we also need to follow our textbook, or their district is telling them they need to do small group work, or on and on and on it goes.

I’m Christina Tondevold, The Recovering Traditionalist, and I hope you will stick around as we take a look at how to help students struggling with mathematics using the 5 Whys Model. We’re going to apply it to education in our quest to build our math minds, so we can build the math minds of our students.

Watch the video or read the transcript below:

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Video series prior videos

“5 Whys” Titanic Example

Components of Number Sense in PreK-2

Components of Number Sense in 3rd-5th

Now, this video is going to be kind of short and sweet because there’s one answer, and I want you to get to work on it and not be sitting here watching this video the whole time. 

The way that we help our struggling students is really drilling down to the root of the issue. And I want to encourage you to use, the 5 Whys Strategy. 

Use the 5 Whys

The 5 Whys is really about, we think about a problem, and we think we have the answer when we ask that first question of WHY? But really it takes 5 WHY?s to get to the root of the issue. 

I’m going to link to a YouTube video that talks about the “5 whys” in relation to the Titanic. You can go and watch the full thing, but here’s the general gist. If you just ask “why did the Titanic sink?”  You would get the answer of “It hit an iceberg.” But why did it hit an iceberg? And then whatever that next answer is, ask why? again, and ask why? again. And typically it takes 5 whys to get to the root of the issue. Now, in that video, you’ll also see that he talks about how you can get to different root issues depending upon your perspective. 

My perspective when it comes to math education is that pretty much I can make a case of whatever the problem is, and we keep asking whys, we can eventually get to the root issue being something around a student’s number sense and the relationships they’ve built around numbers. 

So here’s an example that I want to share with you about that common problem of when we say, kids just aren’t using strategies. Whether that’s for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, we hear it a lot. Kids just aren’t using these strategies. Well, why? Why aren’t they using the strategies? 

After asking the first why, one of the things that might come up is that they’re relying on counting on their fingers, or they’re relying on inefficient strategies, whatever that might be. Maybe, they’re still drawing blocks, the base 10 pieces. So whatever that why is, they’re using some inefficient strategies. Well, why are they using inefficient strategies? Well, because the textbook teaches these strategies quickly, and the kids aren’t getting them. Why aren’t they getting them? Well, because it’s too many strategies, and the kids are getting all confused. Why is that? Well, the kids aren’t seeing connections between the strategies. Well, why aren’t they seeing those connections? Well, it’s because the textbook focuses on just operating with these numbers, teaching it as rules and procedures and does not help build relationships with numbers. And that’s at the root of all those strategies that we’re trying to teach our students is these relationships. 

You can take any problem, you start at the beginning and ask why? And then why? And then why? Now, you’ve got to be careful because some of your answers to these whys might be things that are not in your control. Like, we hear a lot about, well, because parents aren’t doing this, this, or this. You cannot answer a why with something that is out of your control. I want you to focus on your answers to the whys being something that you can actually make a change with, that you have some authority, some power to do something different and rectify the situation. All right, and there is always something there that you can do to help out.

Go find the answer to the end of your 5 Whys

The second piece of advice here is to go find your answer to whatever the problem is using the 5 whys. Once you have your answer, whatever that root issue is, I want you to go research that root issue. Dig down deep to find that root issue and then go explore and learn more about how to help kids build whatever it is. 

In my area, it tends to always be a root issue of number sense.  I can trace everything back to number sense. So if you want some help with building your students’ number sense, I’m going to direct you back to some of my old videos. I’ve got one that’s for PreK-2, and one that’s for 3rd-5th. So that you can get a little bit more info about how to build that number sense and build those relationships for your students. 

I hope that this 5 why activity has helped you build your math mind, so that you can go build the math minds of your struggling students. Have a great day.