Description
One-on-One Activity, Group Activity | 15 minutes


Every student has their unique comfort, learning, and discomfort zones in their math learning journey. Our role as educators is to find the sweet spot of support that lands students in their unique learning zone. This Green, Yellow, and Red Lights activity aims to help tutors/educators support their students by developing an understanding of how students feel about different aspects of math. Click here to download this page as a PDF. This activity can:

  • Help students voice what about math that they feel comfortable with (Green Light).

  • Help students reflect on what they're still learning and need help with (Yellow Light).

  • Help students articulate their limits and identify problems or skills that feel impossible right now (Red Light).

Instructions

1. Introduce a set of math-related tasks.

This can be any topic you're working on in your specific learning environment. The tasks can include specific math problems (i.e. double digit multiplication) and learning-based practices (i.e. keeping focused in math class, encouraging myself to keep trying after I get wrong answers).

2. Pass out a Green Yellow Red Light worksheet.

Take a moment to tell your student what the Green, Yellow, and Red colors represent. Make sure to reinforce that Red doesn't mean failure or something impossible; rather, these colors help reframe failure/confusion as part of the task of learning itself. Click here to download your own worksheet, or you can create your own.

3. Sort the math-related tasks by color.

Ask your student to sort the tasks into the Green, Yellow, or Red Light categories. As they place the activities on the worksheet, encourage them to talk through the activity and add new math-related tasks as they sort them.

4. Discuss their answers.

Afterwards, they should have a clearer sense of how they feel and where they can grow in their learning. Additionally, you will both have a common vocabulary when facing math problems. Based on this activity, you can decide together when problems are too easy (Green Light situation, no need for support), the right amount of difficulty for which tutor’s support would be helpful, or way too hard even if the tutor tries to help (Red Light situation, let’s save this for later). This activity can go hand-in-hand with the WOOP Technique to set up goals and concrete next steps that the student feels comfortable and empowered to take on.

Tips and Tricks

Online Adaptation. The Green Yellow Red Light worksheet could be adapted electronically using platforms like Google Jamboard or another collaborative online tool.

Shared language. Remember that this activity not only helps you gauge a student’s perceived ability, it also creates a shared framework to use over time. Students can respond to each new math problem by reflecting on where it lands in these three zones, and they can provide feedback in real time as you plan and adjust your curriculum or pace.

A note about social desirability. As educators, many students look up to us and might hide their struggle in hope to not disappoint us. First, validate and normalize that it is often hard to verbalize what you think it’s too hard (i.e., red Light), and that’s okay. Then, remind your students that this activity is not intended to evaluate or judge them, but to better understand how they are feeling so that you can meet them where they are.

Going Deeper. This activity is designed specifically around the zone of proximal development. Learn more about this learning theory and more in the Going Deeper section of this Toolkit.