Guided Math 101

Guided small-group reading has been around for a looong time. In fact, in most districts, it's a required part of the literacy block. And for good reason... Guided reading provides differentiation for students and lets the teacher keep close tabs on where each child is as a reader. It's become a best practice in the world of education. What I can't figure out is why guided math hasn't found the same level of discipleship.

Once a child learns letters and sounds and basic phonics skills, reading becomes more of a practice in a specific set of comprehension skills - word meaning, main idea, author's purpose, inferencing, cause and effect, and so forth. There's not much new in reading from third grade on except for text complexity. My third graders are learning about character traits in folktales right now while my high school daughter has been discussing character traits in Shakespeare. If I don't quite get main idea this year, I'll get it again next year and again and again and again.

Math is different. Math continues to build and change from year to year. Math in third grade looks NOTHING like math in high school. In fact, I cannot even begin to decipher one of my daughter's trigonometry problems. (It looks like gibberish to me - a third grade math teacher).

In math, if I miss something essential early on, I may find myself falling farther and father behind because that skill likely won't be explicitly taught again next year. Actually, it may never be taught again.

So why, when teaching essential math skills that can make or break future mathematical success, shouldn't we embrace guided instruction?

Yeah, I know... we teachers have enough on our plates. But planning for guided math isn't all that hard. You just need 3 things: a spot to meet with your groups, a rotation schedule, and some math centers. Let's talk about each of these...

1. A Spot to Meet - I would guess that the majority of teachers use their "reading table" to meet with small groups. Why can't it also be a "math table"? I don't even use a table at all. I meet with students on the rug in front of my big whiteboard easel. This gives us a place to spread out with manipulatives, math journals, individual whiteboards, or whatever else we need. I LOVE my whiteboard easel because I can use it to model strategies and the kids can use it to share their work. It looks like this:

Notice how the picture of my classroom shows the easel close to the ground? Yeah, that's right, my easel can be raised and lowered! Did I tell you that I love it? I use it every, single day, usually multiple times. Best $70 I ever spent (yay Amazon!)

2. A Rotation Schedule - This is actually the trickiest part of guided math groups. But it's no different than scheduling your reading groups. I can't tell you exactly how to do it because each class is unique. It will depend mainly on the number of students and how much time you have each day. However, one thing that should be the same across all classrooms: your groups should be fluid and based on your formative assessments and observations and you should meet with your low groups as much as possible. (Don't forget your high ones though! They need enrichment and can be pushed further than the curriculum goes.)

3. Math Centers - These won't look the same for everyone. Your grade level, standards, and student abilities will dictate your centers. One thing to remember though: Keep it simple! Math centers can quickly get out of hand if you give too many choices or constantly change them. I like to use the same 4 every week:

• Technology (math websites and apps) - Scootpad, Frontrow, IXL, are all good choices if you don't know where to start.
• Partner Work
• Games
• Task Cards

I also count "Meet With Teacher" as a rotation. 

Guided math takes a little bit of time to set up, just like reading groups do, but it's well worth it! Once I implemented it in my classroom, I saw a dramatic change in the amount of math learning that was happening and a positive change in the "mathitude" of my students. 

If you need some help setting up your centers and structuring your groups, you might like to check out my Math Workshop Starter Kit on TpT:

Math Workshop

If you do guided math in your classroom, please leave a comment below with your best tip. I can always use some new ones! Here's my #1 tip: Go to Home Depot or Lowes and get a piece of shower board cut into small rectangles (12x15 works well). They make perfect individual whiteboards that can be used during your math groups. Students will also use them at centers to work out problems. They are invaluable! For erasers, just cut up an old towel or use old socks. 

Beginning Division & a Freebie!

Hi teacher friends! This week in third grade land we are learning to divide. I recently noticed that my kids are having a hard time interpreting certain phrases in word problems. Things like "rows of 3" were really tripping them up. While they all understand what "3 rows" looks like, they can't seem to make sense of "rows of 3". Not the end of the world, but I really want them to understand word problems no matter how they're written.

Today I got out some math block (little unit cubes actually) and had them build a model to represent some of these tricky phrases. Then they drew their model and wrote the corresponding multiplication and division equations. What I thought might be a quick activity that they might rush through turned out to be really challenging.

What I found was that a lot of the kids were mixing up rows and columns, or making arrays when it called for equal groups. This activity let me address those quickly and easily just by moving around the room and observing the kids working.

However, the biggest issue that I saw was a few students who would multiply no matter what. If the task said "14 blocks arranged in groups of 2", they would write 14 x 2 = 28. So, while everyone else was working, I called a small group to my table. Most of them were able to see their mistake once I worked through it with them and the rest of the activity went smoothly. A couple still weren't getting it and  I know that's where I need to focus my attention right now. 

It wasn't rocket science, but this activity really let me see the kids' thinking. If you would like a copy of the worksheet I made for this, you can get it by clicking on the picture below:

Enjoy! I'd love to hear how it works for your class!

You Oughta Know About...Behavior Interventions

Hi teacher friends! I'm really excited to be joining in on the You Oughta Know blog hop once again. You'll be glad you stopped by for this one!

I know you've had your own experiences with that one kid... the one who has so many issues that you don't know where to start, the one who disrupts your class every single day, the one that you've tried EVERYTHING with. Daily notes, calling parents, behavior contracts... nothing works. It's so frustrating!

If you understand just what I'm talking about, then you oughta know about PBIS World. This is a super awesome (and free) website for teachers that's like your own personal behavior specialist. 

When you arrive at the site, you are presented with a list of problems. To get started, just click on the one you really want to address first...

So here I've clicked on "Disrespectful" because well, I hate disrespectful and would like to nip that in the bud first. After you make your selection, the site gives you a list of behaviors that you may be observing. This is to make sure you've correctly identified the root problem. If the list looks accurate, go ahead and click YES at the bottom....

After you've selected the problem, the site gives you a list of tier 1 interventions to try for that particular behavior issue. Now you might be thinking, "Hey, I'm already doing all of this." Maybe, but really look closely and make sure you aren't missing something. For this one, I see that one intervention is to speak with the student in the hallway. I'm wondering why that's important, so I click on it...

This is where the site becomes really helpful. Now you can see the nitty gritty of that specific intervention... why you should do it, when you should do it, and exactly how you should do it so that it will actually work for the student...

This is so important. If you do the intervention the wrong way, you might as well not do anything at all. You have to implement it correctly and consistently and this page really helps you do that.

So after you look at the details, you can go back to the tier 1 page. At the bottom of the page, you have a few options. If you click on "See all tier 1 interventions", you'll just get a list of every intervention under the sun. I don't really suggest this one because you need specific interventions for the problem. However, you should most definitely check out the data tracking forms and strategies...

This page will give you all of the forms you could need from daily behavior notes to self-tracking sheets to parent questionnaires.  They are divided into tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 sections to help you find what you need depending on what stage of intervention you're working in.

PBIS World really is your one-stop shop for behavior interventions. The best part is that it helps you zero in on the issue and then provides all of the tools you need for documentation. Your guidance counselor or school psychologist will love you!

And here are a few resources you might like...

 

Math Anchor Charts

Hi teacher friends! This has been a busy month! I just want to share a few of the anchor charts we've been making in math. The kids help decide what to include and I do the writing. We're working on multiplication right now...

After we make the big chart together, they copy it down in their math journals. They've been going a great job and really enjoy referring back to their journals when needed. Once they realized that I will occasionally let them use their journals during quizzes, their handwriting suddenly got a lot neater!

Here's another chart we made for rounding...

They aren't the fancy, perfect charts you see on Pinterest, but they're effective. I keep them hanging on one wall and the students can go back and look at them any time. The important thing is that they contributed to the content.

Looking for multiplication resources? Here are a few things you might like...

  

How To Teach Regrouping So They Really Understand

Teaching second and third grade, I come across a lot of kids who have trouble making the jump from concrete representations of regrouping to the abstract algorithm. That's not because they aren't smart enough or developmentally ready. It's because in making the jump to the standard algorithm, they are missing a crucial step... converting between place values.

I bet many of your students are weak in this skill too. Just last week, I had to take a detour from my planned math lessons and revisit something they should have learned in second grade - how many tens are in a 3-digit number. It was a simple question, or so I thought...

"What is the total number of tens in the number 238?"

All of their hands shot up in the air and all of them thought the answer was 3.

"No, I don't want to know what number is in the tens place. If we were going to build the number 138 and we only had tens rods and ones blocks, how many tens would we need?"

They stared at me like I was speaking in tongues. No one had an understanding that 2 hundreds is the same as 20 tens. So I got out the math blocks. We counted by tens. We figured it out. We practiced with pictures of math blocks, We did it forwards and backwards. They were ready, right?

So, I wrote a problem on the white board... 

238 - 57

I asked them how we could solve this problem. Note that I did not ask them to find the answer. I wanted to know how they would tackle the problem itself. Not one of them could verbalize the idea that you would need to move one of the hundreds from the hundreds place and convert it into tens in order to subtract the 50. Nor did anyone see that there were 23 tens from which you could subtract 5 tens. I got all kinds of things like...

"Cross off the two and cross off the three and put a one above it and then you have thirteen which is bigger than five." 

I prodded them to explain their ideas and again, they just stared at me. Clearly they had been shown the algorithm either by a parent or a teacher, but they had no understanding of what the procedure meant or why they were doing it.

I'm sure my class isn't the only group of 8-year olds who get stuck when it comes to understanding what regrouping means. That's where expanded form comes in. When you break a problem down into expanded form before subtracting, it all becomes very clear. This is what it looks like...

Now students are forced to see the value of each digit and therefore, understand what is being moved from one column to the next. It's the logical step between concrete and abstract and it's missing from a lot of math instruction. If your kids don't have a solid understanding of regrouping and why they are doing it, try using the expanded form model before the standard algorithm. I think you'll find that it really helps!

A few resources you might like: