Improving the Academic Performance of Aloba Elementry School Grade III Pupils in Mathematics through the Use of Differentiated Thinking Tools

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Many teachers experienced the difficulty in teaching mathematics, especially in elementary grades. The lack of interest, lack of practice in solving problems, low retention skills, ineffective teaching pedagogy, and not enough materials to use are just five of the many reasons why pupils performed poorly in mathematics. Aloba Elementary School is not an exception to this problem. Of the eighteen (18) Grade-III pupils, eight (8) have the difficulty in learning the subject based on their grades in the first quarter. This problem propelled the researcher to design and employ a more pupil-centered intervention that would allow students to explore and learn more even outside the classroom and after class hours. With so many positive things about the use of worksheets and problem sets, the researcher designed more contextualized and differentiated thinking tools to help improve the performance of her pupils in mathematics.

METHODS

The researcher included all the eighteen Grade-III pupils as participants in the action research conducted. A simple descriptive method was used to determine the effectiveness of the intervention employed. Grades in the mathematics of all the pupils in the first quarter were used as baseline data. Then, the grades of the same pupils in the second quarter were used to determine whether the intervention worked positively. The researcher's focus of the study was to compare the average grade of the pupils during the first and second quarters, thereby, the comparison between means or simple descriptive statistics was used.

RESULTS

The average grade in the mathematics of all the 18 pupils during the first quarter is 79.38 which is 4.06 lower than the average grade in the second quarter which is 83.44. This data implies that there is a positive effect on the use of differentiated thinking tools in the performance of the pupils in mathematics. From an informal interview, pupils revealed that they became more interested in doing the activities in the thinking tools because they could use it freely with much time.

DISCUSSIONS

The result implies that the use of differentiated thinking tools improved the academic performance of the pupils in mathematics and developed an interest in learning the subject. Thinking tools helped them improve their skills in computation, problem-solving, and consequently retention. It also helped the pupils easily recall the different mathematical concepts and formulas taught by the teacher. In some cases, it helped them explore and learn independently.