Differentiation in Guided Math Groups

Meeting individual student’s needs can be done easier if teachers use differentiation in Guided Math groups.

Guided Math meets the needs of students in small group settings.

Teachers can plan for different student’s needs by planning for different math groups.  For example, in the picture above the teacher is working with a small group.

This lesson for students who are behind grade level or lack background connections would start at learning the difference between the hands and then progress to learning/practicing telling time to the hour.

Another group may know telling time to the hour, so the group practices it so the students show they have mastered this skill and then progresses into telling time to the half hour, which would be the next math standard.  In fact, during my experience in teaching I would have two groups that need this at-grade-level standard practice.

Then there will be one group that is advanced. This group would practice the next math standard of telling time to the fifteen minutes.

Notice that all four groups are practicing telling time.  All of these activities meet the individual’s needs.  In fact, since these activities were all hands-on, there are no papers to copy or grade AND the students were using math process standard skills of persevering and using tools.  These types of hands-on guided group lessons provide students with the concrete activities they need to make sense of math.  All of this by using …differentiation in math.