Did you ever have a time when the answer was there in front of you all the time but you just didn't or couldn't see it?  Well, that's exactly how I feel about RTI and the 4th grade kids I'm working with.  After three weeks of  looking at test scores and seeing the areas that need remediation, it hit me!  What these students need is an intervention for math vocabulary.  We assume that the kids understand the vocabulary because we use it all the time, we give examples on the board, we have them do math boxes in which we speak the vocabulary to them.  But in reality, they're just pretending to understand. They're not willing to take the risk to say I don't get it in front of their peers, and so they say nothing at all.  They take the math test and fail woefully and we wonder why.

Upon analyzing the test questions that are most often missed in this group of kids it suddenly became apparent that everything they miss is vocabulary based.  These few kids need more time to process the new vocabulary words, try them out for size, see how they work and how they interrelate with the math terms they already know.  It is my job to make it more user friendly for them.

Thank goodness for You Tube.  I have found some wonderful resources on You Tube that I can take and mold into appropriate activities for my groups, which by the way are mostly boys.

I found a very cute video with kids singing a song for perpendicular and parallel lines.  I realized that my boys would NOT go for that so my aide and I changed it into a chant, along with some arm movements and they love it.  Here is the chant (minus the arm movements)

Perpendicular
Parallel
These are the lines we know so well.
Intersecting lines
They cross
Know this and you won't get lost.
Lines have two ends
Rays have one
Line segments have two
Now you're done!

The kids like it, we do it every day for now...and soon we'll be moving on to "I Am A Parallelogram"  You can see on YouTube.