Individualizing to Assist with Math Instruction

Hey this is Betsy from Classroom Caboodle talking about providing one-on-one support in math. So, every day after I give my mini-lesson instruction I send my students off to work independently and to give these new skills a go but one of the standard practices I have in my classroom is that students know that if they need some one-on-one support for something they don’t understand or if they’re confused they can self-select to go to the we call it "the circle table". It’s just an old poker table that I covered with white-board in my classroom. And students know that’s where I will be every day after mini-lesson instruction. Sometimes I’ll pull small groups back there if there’s a skill from a prior day for example that I need to shore up with kids, but in general during that time when students are independently applying new skills they know that table is open for them. One of the rules though is of course they have to try the independent work before they just scoot on back to the circle table. And so that gives me often about 5 minutes where I can get back to my circle table, get things put away from my mini-lesson and be ready for those little customers to come to my table. And so, here’s what happens is, students if they have a question or if there is some confusion, they just grab their paper and a pencil, grab a stool and come on back to the table. And they don’t get to sit down and say “I don’t get it”. They know they have to have a specific question about the math that we’re doing. Sometimes I have kids who say “Mrs Weigle I’m just so confused about this problem”. And I’ll say “well y’know what, tell me what you do know." "Why don’t you read it to me and tell me what you do understand," then we’ll see what specific question you have”. And they’ll go through it, they’ll read it to me and we’ll talk through it and then they solve it, they're with me and I say “why don’t you try the next one” and generally after one or two problems back they go to their seat to work independently. Of course I do have frequent fliers who want to come to that circle table just to sit next to me, just for reassurance and I do allow that unless it becomes sort of a y’know a co-dependency kind of a thing where I’m just enabling their neediness, I don’t want to do that. But it’s really a come and go during that independent work time and I’ll even have some of my gifted students come back and say “I’m really confused by this”. It's a very non-threatening thing. and it’s just part of that ebb and flow in my classroom during math. Now what’s interesting is sometimes I’ll have no customers, and I’ll go “yes my mini-lesson was awesome today!” Sometimes I’ll have all 25 of my students heading for that circle table and that’s when I know I’ll say “whoa I need to do a little re-teaching here" "Hey everybody let’s circle up, let’s go through this one more time”. So it’s kind of a way to take the temperature of your class too, if you have very few customers you know you’re spot-on the kids are getting the hang of this, if you have a lot of customers “oh, we better re-think this and see if we can go at the topic from a different angle”. But anyway, that’s how I give that one-on-one support. Kids never get to say “I don’t get it”, they always have to come with a specific question. So, let me know what you think, how you handle that one-on-one support in your classroom. I’d love to hear from you so you could go ahead and write a comment below or contact me on Facebook or on my Classroom Caboodle or Classroom Teacher Resources webpage. So thanks, see you next time.