Today's the day... we are officially talking about Guided Math in Action!
Here are my biggest ah-ha moments from the first two chapters.
Alright, shall we start?? Feel free to respond to some or all of the questions below. These questions come from the end of each chapter.
No. I get children every year who believe they are "no good at math" even from such an early age. Or they think, "math is hard" I think a lot of these kids even have parents who reenforce this idea by telling them that "math was hard for me in school too" I know parents do this to comfort their child and with good intentions, but I wish they would stop! Click here to read what I think about this "I'm not good at math" societal norm we've created!
Talk to them. Remind them it is okay to not understand. It is okay to struggle. Encourage them to keep pushing through that struggle. Teach them to take a break and then come back to the problem.
I created these posters you can grab for free. They come straight from Dr. Nicki's thoughts on teaching kids how to preserver. I plan to talk about this idea at length with my kids from day one next year. These posters (freebie alert) will hang on the wall and I will refer back to them MANY times. I think we need to remind students a lot that not everything we do is easy. We grow as learners when things are not easy!!
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They do now! Lol! I am guilty of asking just a few students to respond to questions I throw out during a whole group mini lesson. When you "do the math" and realize how many questions a student answers during the year if you can on one student to answer each question VS. the number of questions they answer if you allow all students to answer, it becomes a no brainer. So, my plan moving forward is to assign students a partner starting on the first day. When I am teaching my mini lessons students will sit near their turn and talk partner. Then, when I ask a question they will turn and talk. I created these posters (freebie alert) to assign partners in a fun way. I think I will just hang the posters up near the board so we can see them all the time. I plan to print and laminate so I can change partners easily as needed!
Of course students also get to have mathematical conversations at my table.
Celebrate the struggle!! Cheer for kids no matter if the answer is right or wrong, cheer for them when they don't give up!! If your class uses brag tags you could give this perseverance tag to students who stick with the struggle!!
I've always used Turn and Talk to launch discussions and number talks as mentioned above. This year I plan to incorporate google classroom as a way to facilitate conversations between peers (I will blog about it once I get it started) and I also plan to use a cool app called Plickers. This are mostly all for auditory and visual learners... I can't wait to see what others suggest!
Usually I pull everyone back to the carpet and quickly sum up what we learned that day. Sometimes I will highlight something cool a students said or did or I'll ask them to share. I may even ask for feedback on a management piece if there is something we need to work at. After reading the chapter though I plan to do a better job at this piece. I want students to be the one to share and I love Dr. Nicki's suggestion of a mathematician's chair just like an author's chair! I will set a timer though because it is easy to turn that into a time suck!!
I have a few more freebies I am working on from these chapters. I'll post them on IG and in the FB group when I get them posted. Thanks for sticking around, I know that was a LONG post.. I can't wait to have a discussion with all of you!!
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