This change in both curriculum and instruction places additional demands on students unaccustomed to a constructivist mathematics class. Migrant students have rarely had exposure to mathematics classrooms implementing the NCTM Standards, classrooms which emphasize problem solving, communications, reasoning, and making connections. Since the course's inception in 1990, over 350 students have managed to complete their algebra course and go on to graduate from high school. In the class itself, students consistently report a much better feeling concerning their own assessment of their mathematical abilities and state that they feel less intimidated by the prospect of taking more mathematics courses after algebra. The paper will now look briefly at the particulars of how students are succeeding.
Students know from the outset what the expectations are.
The course begins with an assessment of students' individual strengths and areas for rapid improvement. All students entering the author's course are given an initial assessment of their oral mathematics vocabulary and problem solving abilities, in particular, and their oral communications skills, in general. Not surprisingly, in a typical summer course offered to twenty-one students, only two could articulate a situation in which they envisioned using some form of mathematics for a solution. The nature of the audio-based delivery system forces all participants to become active communicators, both as listeners and speakers. For most students, active listening is not a skill that is taught in the traditional mathematics classroom.