Differentiation in 1st Grade Math

Differentiated Instruction is a way to insure all students has access to the curriculum. The content, process or product can be differentiated based on the student’s readiness, interests, or learner profile. Sounds simple, right? Talking about differentiation is one thing but acting on it is often a more difficult task. Differentiation is math is especially difficult for some teachers. We work hard making all sorts of “stuff”, different worksheets, tools, and other materials. Despite our best intentions, what typically happens is the standard (or benchmark) get watered down instead of differentiated. In a recent blog post Differentiated Instruction: What Difference Does it Make?   David Ginsburg makes the following point:

But does it really matter whether DI is a bad idea, as Mike Schmoker insists, or a badly implemented one? Either way, effective teaching includes assessing and addressing students' individual differences.

There are three key things every teacher needs to know to be successful at teaching. You need to know:

1.     Your students,

2.     Your curriculum (standards, resources, materials), and

3.     How to make it visible to others (including your students!).

The first two are familiar to all teachers but the last one is generally not given the importance it deserves. Visibility can take many forms. It can be the planning the teacher does before the lesson, recorded in a lesson plan. It can be charted, to keep a concrete record of previous learning. It can be the portfolio of individual student work, documenting growth and acquisition of a skill or strategy. It’s the formative assessment, the assessment FOR learning, that makes differentiation so powerful.

In this video Alane Wright, 1^st grade teacher at Neptune Beach Elementary, talks about how she differentiated a math lesson for her students.


Charting in 1st Grade Math from Jill Kolb on Vimeo.

Key in this lesson was the simple changes Alane made to meet the readiness level of her students. By giving some students dice with dots, and some with numbers, and some with a combination of both dots and numbers, all students were able to meet the benchmark. Also key was the charting Alane did with her students. The students with the least efficient strategy – counting each dot on both dice – now have a visual reminder of other options for combining situations when they are developmentally ready for it!

So what is the next step? For me, I am only as good as the resources I have around me. Reading blogs and books are like learning to fish. If I want to keep eating, oops…teaching math to young students, I’ll need to fish for new ideas. One book I love is Math For All: Differentiating Instruction (K-2). There is also another version for Grades 3-5 and 6-8. While it is not the kind of book that you can open up and say, “Oh, I can do that tomorrow!” it is an outstanding resource that will show you how other classroom teachers have differentiated math lessons for their students.

Designing good differentiated lessons includes the important step of making visible all the learning going on in your classroom. Charting with your students is one key way of documenting their growth. I would love to hear about ways you differentiated math with your students or different charting ideas. Thanks in advance for sharing.

Designing a Math Closing: Charting Matters!

In Duval County Public Schools (DCPS) the math workshop model consists of three parts - Launch, Explore, and Summarize

Launch (Opening Meeting 15-20 Minutes)
Lessons may address:

• Presentation of conceptual problem
• Analysis of problem strategies
• Comparison of related problems

Teacher Role:

• Teaches mini-lesson that includes the presentation of a conceptual problem to be solved
• States the focus of the work (concept and/ or skill) clearly connecting it with standards
• Makes expectations explicit
• Teachers should not present particular strategies that will lead students to solve problems in that way during Explore.

Student talk should be to clarify questions

Explore (Work Period 20-25 Minutes)
Student Role:

• Independent work
• Partner work
• Small group work
• Involved in working problems that engage them in different stages of the problem solving process
• Knows exactly what is expected
• Contributes to class activities
• Works with manipulatives and other mathematics tools or resources as needed
• Generates evidence of process used in problem solving
• Uses accountable talk

Teacher Role:

• Monitors student work
• Engages individuals or groups in accountable talk
• Observes students’ discussions and explorations of their strategies
• Makes anecdotal notes on observations, such as misconceptions and strategy development
• Examines student work as it evolves
• Small group instruction
• Conferencing
• Teacher begins to develop the summarize session by noting different strategies that will be addressed during the closing and selecting students or groups to present during the closing.

Summarize (Closing 20 – 25 Minutes)
Student Role:

• Shares strategies and approaches to given problems
• Makes connections to the main concepts from the lesson
• Justifies strategies and solutions
• Compares and analyzes solution strategies presented
• Uses accountable talk

Teacher Role:

• Scaffolds problem solving strategies from least efficient to most efficient
• Scaffolds students as they make connections to the main concepts from the lesson
• Fosters a spirit of inquiry by asking higher order questions
• Addresses misconceptions
• Highlights and records student strategies and generalizations for future reference

Teachers often feel teaching only occurs when they are the one in front of the class. This workshop model turns things around, placing the student in the role of the expert with the teaching coming at the end, during the Summarize. The student is the one teaching how they solved the problem to the other students, demonstrating a strategy. The planning begins during the Explore where the “Teacher begins to develop the summarize session by noting different strategies that will be addressed during the closing and selecting students or groups to present during the closing.”

This careful planning for the Summarize section is done while the teacher circulates through the room, observing the student application of strategies. The scaffolding of the closing, from the least to the most efficient use of strategies, gives the class a view into the different ways students solved the same problem. Images shared in front of the room, or projected from a document camera, create a temporary view into the thinking. Charting, on the other hand, creates a permanent record of student strategies.

Learning to chart is not difficult. It just takes practice. It also helps to have models and a few guidelines. Amber McFatter, 2nd grade teacher at Neptune Beach Elementary, is one such model. In this video she explains about charting in her classroom.

Charting in 2nd Grade Math from Jill Kolb on Vimeo.

Sometimes teachers will tell me "I can't chart in front of the students. My charts look so messy!" It really is okay if the charts are messy because learning is messy. There are strategies for teachers to help with charting. 

Preparation
First make sure your chart paper and at least two markers of different colors are available. Most teachers hang the chart, with magnets or tape, right next to the screen so they have a clear view of the student work being projected. It is nice if you have one color marker for each student. Please don't use yellow or pastel markers or any type of highlighter! They are difficult to read and fade very quickly. At Neptune Beach Elementary teachers are encouraged to not only include the benchmark and/or the essential question on the chart but also to include the date.

More Preparation
During the Explore you are planning your closing and selecting students to present their strategies, scaffolding the strategies. You will get an idea on how much room to allow by looking at the student work. Different strategies may not take the same amount of space. It is important, however, to represent their strategy in the same manner as the student. This includes drawing, labeling, and recording student thinking. After a while it gets easier to identify both the efficiency and maturity in the strategies.

Hopefully this will help you and, more importantly, your students create deeper learning with math closings!