Guided Math Lessons in First Grade

Getting Started

Nicki Newton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367901899
• eBook ISBN: 9781000400397
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Guided Math Lessons in First Grade provides detailed lessons to help you bring guided math groups to life. Based on the bestselling Guided Math in Action, this practical book offers 16 lessons, taught in a round of 3—concrete, pictorial, and abstract. The lessons are based on the priority standards and cover fluency, word problems, operations and algebraic thinking, and place value. Author Dr. Nicki Newton shows you the content as well as the practices and processes that should be worked on in the lessons, so that students not only learn the content but also how to solve problems, reason, communicate their thinking, model, use tools, use precise language, and see structure and patterns.

Throughout the book, you'll find tools, templates, and blackline masters so that you can instantly adapt the lesson to your specific needs and use it right away. With the easy-to-follow plans in this book, students can work more effectively in small guided math groups—and have loads of fun along the way!

1
Introduction

Figure 1.1 Guided Math Example 1

Figure 1.2 Guided Math Example 2

Guided math is a small-group instructional strategy that teaches students in their zone of proximal development around the priority standards. There are so many standards, but every state has priority focus standards. Those are the standards that you teach in a small guided math group. It is a time for hands-on, minds-on learning based on the standards. It is a time for discussing ideas, listening to the thinking of others, reasoning out loud, and becoming a confident, competent mathematician.

Guided math groups are for everyone! Too often, students are rushed through big ideas, understandings, and skills. They are left with ever widening gaps. Guided math groups give teachers the time needed to work with students in a way that they can all learn. Guided math groups can be used to remediate, to teach on grade-level concepts, and to address the needs of students that are working beyond grade level.

Guided math groups can be heterogeneous or homogeneous. It depends on what you are trying to do. If you are teaching a specific skill, counting on, one group could be working with visually leveled flashcards and another group could be working with more abstract number flashcards. You could also pull a group that is still exploring it just concretely on the beaded number line for another session. The groups are flexible, and students work in different groups at different times, never attached to any one group for the entire year. Students meet in a particular guided math group for three or four times based on their specific instructional needs and then they move on.

Figure 1.3 Visually Leveled Flashcards

Figure 1.4 Marked Number Line

Guided math groups can occur in all types of classrooms. Typically, they are part of a Math Workshop. In a Math Workshop (see Figure 1.5) there are three parts.

Figure 1.5 Math Workshop

Opening	Student Activity	Debrief
♦ Energizers and Routines ♦ Problem Solving ♦ Mini-Lesson	♦ Math Workstations ♦ Guided Math Groups	♦ Discussion ♦ Exit Slip ♦ Mathematician’s Chair Share

What Are the Other Kids Doing?

The other students should be engaged in some type of independent practice. They can be working alone, with partners, or in small groups. They could be rotating through stations based on a designated schedule or they could be working from a menu of Must Do’s and Can Do’s. The point is that students should be practicing fluency, word problems, and place value and working on items in the current unit of study. This work should be organized in a way that students are working in their zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978).

Differentiating workstations helps to purposefully plan for the learning of all students. The fluency workstation games should be divided by strategy, for example students can be working on either make ten facts, doubles, or bridge ten facts, depending on what they need (Baroody, 2006; Van de Walle, 2007; Henry & Brown, 2008). Another example is word problems. There are 15 single-step problems that first graders are exposed to. Knowing the learning trajectory and understanding the structures that go from simple to complex can help organize the teaching and learning of word problems (Carpenter, Fennema, Franke, Levi, & Empson, 1999; Jitendra, Hoff, & Beck, 1999).

Figure 1.6 Workstations 1

Figure 1.7 Workstations 2

Benefits of Guided Math Groups

• ♦ See student knowledge in action.
• ♦ Monitor the concepts and skills that are understood.
• ♦ Catch and address the misunderstandings.
• ♦ Ask questions that highlight thinking.
• ♦ Analyze thinking.
• ♦ Listen to conversations.

  

  Figure 1.8 Workstation Contract

• ♦ Assess in the moment.
• ♦ Redirect in the moment.
• ♦ Differentiate as needed.

Key Points

• ♦ Different Reasons: remediate, focus on grade-level topics or working beyond grade level
• ♦ Cycle of Engagement: concrete, pictorial, abstract
• ♦ Heterogeneous and Homogeneous grouping
• ♦ Math Workshop
• ♦ Math Workstations
• ♦ Benefits of Guided Math

Summary

Guided math is a great way to differentiate learning for all your students. Focus on the priority standards. Students approach these standards through a concrete, pictorial, and abstract cycle of engagement. Sometimes the groups are homogeneous groups and other times the groups are heterogeneous. Guided math groups can be done in a variety of ways, either traditional set-ups or a Math Workshop model. The other students should always be doing work that they are familiar with and are practicing in the math workstation. Many times, the work that students are working on in the guided math group is carried over into the math workstation. When the students are in guided math groups, the other students should be meaningfully engaged in math workstations. All of this works together to give all students a chance to learn.

Reflection Questions

1. How are you differentiating instruction around the priority standards right now?
2. Currently, how do you group students? What informs your grouping?
3. Do you have a plan to make sure that everybody fully understands the priority standards?

References

• Baroody, A. J. (2006). Why children have difficulties mastering the basic number combinations and how to help them. Teaching Children Mathematics, 13, 22–32.
• Carpenter, T. P., Fennema, E., Franke, M. L., Levi, L., & Empson, S. B. (1999). Children’s mathematics: Cognitively guided instruction. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
• Henry, V. J., & Brown, R. S. (2008). First-grade basic facts: An investigation into teaching and learning of an accelerated, high-demand memorization standard. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 153–183.
• Jitendra, A. K., Hoff, K., & Beck, M. M. (1999). Teaching middle school students with learning disabili...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Meet the Author
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Behind the Scenes
• 3 Architecture of a Small-Group Lesson
• 4 Guided Math Talk
• 5 Small-Group Fluency Lessons
• 6 Small-Group Lessons for Algebraic Thinking and Operations
• 7 Small-Group Word Problem Lessons
• 8 Place Value
• 9 Action Planning and FAQs