Guided Math Lessons in Fourth Grade

Getting Started

Nicki Newton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000467277
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Mathematics

Guided Math Lessons in Fourth 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 three–concrete, pictorial and abstract. The lessons are based on the priority standards and cover fluency, word problems, fractions 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 more work effectively in small guided math groups—and have loads of fun along the way! Remember that guided math groups are about doing the math. So doing mathematical sketches to show what they understand and can make sense of the abstract numbers. When students are given the opportunities to make sense of the math in hands-on and visual ways, then the math begins to make sense!

1

Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003169581-1

Guided math is a small group instructional strategy that teaches students in their zone of proximal development around the priority standards (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2). 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.

Figure 1.1 Guided Math Example 1

Figure 1.2 Guided Math Example 2

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 who are working beyond grade level.

There are different ways that students can be grouped. Sometimes students are grouped by readiness. Other times students are grouped by interest or choice. So, for example, say you are working on rounding and half the class gets it and the other half is still struggling. You might pull some temporary small groups and practice some hands-on lessons with the beaded number line for the students who are struggling, but that doesn’t mean you will forget about the other kids. You could also pull another group of kids and play a rounding card game (they are past needing the concrete scaffolds). You could have days where you pull a heterogeneous group and allow the kids who need the scaffolds to use them during the game (see Figures 1.3 and 1.4).

Figures 1.3 & 1.4 Visually Leveled Flashcards & Number Line

You could also ask students what they are interested in working on in small groups. You all would have a whole class discussion and generate a list of topics and then students would sign up for groups sessions that they are interested in attending. The focus here is that the students generate the topics and then sign up for them. Another way to do this is to have the teacher think about different topics that the students need to work on, based on the data and then offer those topics to the students, and they can sign up for which sessions that they want to attend.

Guided math groups can be heterogeneous or homogeneous. It depends on what you are trying to do. If you are teaching a specific skill, such as multiplying by 4’s, 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.

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

• Energizers and routines
• Problem solving
• Mini-lesson

Student Activity

• Math workstations
• Guided math groups

Debrief

• 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, 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 (see Figures 1.6 and 1.7). For example, the fluency workstation games should be divided by strategy; for examples students can be working on different strategies, some working on addition doubles plus 1, others on doubling with multiplication tables (Baroody, 2006; Van de Walle & Lovin, 2006; Henry & Brown, 2008). Another example is word problems. There are 9 different types of multiplication and division problems. Different students might be working on different structures. For example, some students might be working on equal group problems, while others are working on multiplicative comparison problems. The goal is that by the end of the year they all know all the types. 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, 1999/2015; Fuchs et al., 2010); Jitendra, Hoff, & Beck (1999) (see Figure 1.8).

Figures 1.6 & 1.7 Workstation Games

Figure 1.8 Workstation Contract

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
• 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

Chapter 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 setups 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. (2015). Children’s mathematics: Cognitively guided instruction. NH: Heinemann.
• Fuchs, L., Zumeta, R., Schumacher, R., Powell, S., Seethaler, P., Hamlett, C., & Fuchs, D. (2010). The effects of schema-broadening instruction on second graders’ word-problem performance and their ability to represent word problems with algebraic equations: A randomized...

Table of contents

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