Through guided math stations and differentiated strategies, I witnessed my students grow in many ways. Student engagement increased during our math block. I was able to hear more students' thinking and reasoning in a small group setting. Students learned various strategies to solve problems and were able to choose the method they wanted. Students developed more fluency with naked numbers/computations. This knowledge helped students feel confident in verbalizing and sharing their thinking. Most importantly, students looked forward to math time when guided math stations began!

One of the challenges I faced was the inconsistent attendance of students. Due to the student population I serve, several students missed multiple days throughout the action research. Another challenge I faced was finding time to appropriately differentiate instruction. Some days 15 minutes did not seem like enough time to help scaffold for students. One last challenge was independence of students. At the beginning, my students struggled with the new tasks I gave them and were not able to persevere. We had to take a few days practicing and modeling how to ask for help or how to problem solve through a productive struggle.

There were many successes throughout my action research. One of the biggest was student confidence! A student who, in the beginning was shy and did not engage much during math, at the end was one of the loudest in the group! She began to make connections to previous lessons we had done, stating things such as, "We did a problem like this one yesterday!" Another huge success was an increase in students' automaticity of basic math facts. XtraMath provided students multiple opportunities to practice math facts daily.

Overall, I truly think this study made me a better educator. I feel like I have a much clearer picture of my students' number sense and mathematical readiness. I was able to push my students and challenge them individually. I feel like I have a better handle on how to navigate struggles students may have with math topics.

Looking back, I would have liked my grade level teammate to also implement guided math stations so that we could have compared the data. I would have also liked to do more flexible grouping throughout the week. I think students benefited from hearing others' reasoning, but I would have liked to see if there was a greater impact if it happened more frequently.

In the future, I plan on continuing the guided math model. I am going to do three stations instead of four, in hopes to have longer time with students. I am also planning on teaching more math games to my students to allow them more opportunities to practice mathematical skills, improve their confidence, spend time discussing and reasoning about various concepts, and improve their overall mathematical performance.