Looking at Math with new eyes!

Guided Math? What?

As you may have seen in my previous post, I looped with my current class from first to second grade. In first grade I was delivering mostly whole group instruction and I was using our math curriculum to present the content. What I noticed as I was teaching was I was only meeting a third of my class with this approach. I felt like the assessments gave me no information to guide my instruction for my top and bottom groups. I knew I had to do something different. Guided math had been a hot topic in our district and everyone was talking about how to make it work. How do you cram in the content while still meeting all of their needs? There was a lot to think about!

Reflect

I took a step back and thought about how I make it work in reading. I thought about my whole group comprehension mini lesson and how I utilized small guided reading groups to meet students at their level. I also wondered how could I differentiate the independent component like I do in Daily 5. In reading each group has their own word sort, leveled books, and independent writing journals. Transferring this level of differentiation to math seemed like an overwhelming task. How could I possibly do this for both subjects?

Research & Amazing Teachers

In my research I found that many amazing teachers are guiding students with this approach and sharing about their experiences. There are three people who REALLY changed the way I was thinking about Guided Math. The first was Catherine Reed from The Brown Bag Teacher. She was a first grade teacher and had so many great visuals that allowed me to see how I could make it work in my room. (Not to mention her resources on TPT were a great start!) The next two came as a pair for me. Graham Fletcher at G Fletchy and Christina Tondevold at The Recovering Traditionalist changed the way I THOUGHT about math instruction. Their webinars, blogs, videos, and materials allowed me to assess and understand where my students were in the math progression. They also taught me what I could do to help shape them into mathematicians who can understand and apply math concepts and strategies to real life situations.

In Our Classroom

Guided math in our classroom is my absolute favorite time of the day!! It amazes me how much more connected I feel to my students now that I can really see how they are understanding math. I am by no means an expert! This is just how we are making it work in our classroom.

Math Chat - Mini Lesson (15-20 mins)

Students bring their Math Chat folders with them to the carpet as soon as they come in the room. I will typically have a problem already up on the board and will set a timer. All of the students work to solve the problems and are prepared to share their thinking. Often they will also share which mathematical practice they demonstrated in the process. Below are examples of what I may teach in the short mini lesson.

-Number Strings or "Number Talks" (Christina talks about this on her blog)

-"Real World" number problems (Graham talks about number pluckers in his webinar!)

- 3 Act Math Lessons (typically once a week - by Graham)

- Lessons that tie to the Mathematical Practices

- Strategy or Skill I need to introduce to all of my students

Guided Math Groups (45 mins)

There are three groups that I see for guided math with about 6-7 students per group. While I am meeting with my group the other students are completing independent activities. See categories below for more details.

Teacher Table - I use formative assessments to make decisions about where to take instruction so that it meets the needs of my students. My first group of students are working on number sense. I LOVE the resources that Graham made. I use this on a regular basis to think about what is next for my students. Christina also has great subitizing games!!

iPads - I have 4 classroom iPads and 1 teacher device. Our schedule runs on a 6 day cycle. For 3 days I have the students complete DreamBox. DreamBox is a math program that our school has invested in. It is a web based application to help fill gaps of understanding and offers lots of differentiation. The other 3 days my students are using Seesaw. Seesaw is a FREE digital student portfolio application that allows students to record their process of understanding math problems. I give them specific tasks or allow them to create their own and solve with peers. I have also had them create their own 3 Act Math Lessons. For more information about Seesaw check out my twitter pages @autumn_zam or Zam_Class

Differentiated Math Games - I created a system so that I could organize, differentiate, and check in with the students weekly. The first thing I did was purchase this 10 drawer organizer. I wanted the multi drawers so that I could break each bin down by strategies/standards that are covered in our grade. To see the title of each bin see the documents below. On top of the bin is a picture frame with a checklist with our class list. This allows me (and my parent helpers) to check in with students every week. I know exactly who has been met with and can make sure the others are seen by the end of the week. Each group has a check off sheet that they use to indicate which games they have played. NOW for the differentiation piece. I hear it all the time and I have said it myself... "who has time to do all of that?!" I thought this was impossible, but once I got started with the games from Catherine Reed I felt that it was manageable. I started only with her games. Eventually I added more games for differentiation as we used them in small groups. The students may all be going into the same bin but they are aware of which games they are to play. I typically use colors to code the groups. The other AMAZING thing that was extremly easy was multisided dice. I purchased these from Amazon. If you teach the "Good Fit" book lesson for Daily 5, then the "Good Fit" Dice lesson will be just as beneficial. My students know how to use dice to make the game a good fit for them.

Here are a few of the things I have created this school year. Please feel free to use!

Differentiated Math Games Set Up - Click Image

3 Act Math Lesson Planner and Activity Sheets - Click Image

Math Read Aloud: Inch by Inch - Click Image