This is how I spend my time planning small groups and get my students prepared for guided math.
Right from the get-go
We start math activities on day one of school! I get a read on how they feel about math in general, typically an alarming amount of students are worried already and say that they aren’t good at math.
We do a lot of group work and problem-solving activities, like puzzles. Check out my favourite website that is FULL of free math puzzles! This is where I usually get all of my weekly math small group puzzles from when I start planning small groups! We work together and celebrate all of the success that we have.
We spend a lot of time sharing the strategies we used, I will literally let every student in the class share if they are confident enough! I also talk a lot about how we can learn from our mistakes, cliche, I know, but you can really see the build up of their math confidence when they want to share what they did and how they got the answer wrong!
So, during the first two weeks, we all do the same activities at the same time. I model how I want things to look, how I want them to glue sheets into their interactive notebooks, everything! After those two weeks, we start to test out small groups each day. At the end of every 20 minute group, we all come back together as a class and I ask questions like:
- What went well in your group today?
- What was a challenge for you or your group?
- Did we do better than yesterday?
- Did you use your time wisely?
- Did your group put everything back the way it was?
planning Small Groups
This is my favourite part! I mentioned in the last blog post about the 5 groups I have:
- Work with the Teacher
- Independent Work
- Puzzles
- Fact Fluency
- Technology
Work with the teacher is always explicit instruction on whatever topic I am teaching to the whole class. For example, if we are learning multiplication of decimal numbers by a whole number, in my small groups, I might be using manipulatives and reteaching the lesson, scaffolding it slightly, or sometimes challenging students who are beyond the use of manipulatives!
Independent work is something that follows the lesson they just did with me. Maybe a worksheet with a few questions, a digital worksheet or an interactive notebook page.
I already explained the puzzles above!
Fact fluency focuses on basic math skills by playing dice, card or board games and sometimes I use websites!
Technology often uses our Chromebooks and has websites linked in our classroom. We have technology coding outcomes, so sometimes they work in small groups to code our robot mouse or use the website Scratch.
What happens if they finish early?
Not only will they finish early, but sometimes they will get off track and be silly. When these things happen, I always have a plan. On the slides that I share with my students to show them what math small group they are going to today, there are two options for early finishers. They know to not interrupt my small group and just get started on the next task.
If they are not doing their work during their work time, it catches up to them! On Friday, we have our final small group and then we have tech time. If they are not finished their math from the week, they must finish before they go to the next activity. Trust me, they always want that tech time, so they get to work!
On weeks that we miss a day of school, we usually just double up our math small groups and have two in one day. They always think that this is exciting!
Did you miss Part 1 of the blog series? You can click here to read it!
If you are interested in my free guided math templates, you can download them here!
