Newsletter—2017 Jan

Hello and welcome back to the second half of the school year. WGEN has several events coming up for our Wilson gifted students. On Saturday, Feb 4, 2017 we are hosting an exciting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) themed event “Forces and Motion” at the Reading Public Museum. And on Friday, March 24, 2017, in conjunction with the Yocum Institute for the Arts, we will be hosting a special workshop before the show, “The Fisherman and his Wife” at the Miller Center for the Arts. Watch for the email announcements of these two events soon.

Before the winter break WGEN had a special meeting discussing a new teaching method called “Guided Math.” Mrs. Stacey Stoudt, Wilson’s new Director of Assessment, Data, and Analysis, and the former Principal at Green Valley, gave the presentation and afterwards held a question and answer session. Those parents who attended the meeting were able to hear directly from Mrs. Stoudt about this innovative approach to math instruction and have their questions answered. For those parents who were unable to attend the event, I have included a summary of Mrs. Stoudt’s presentation and the question and answer session afterwards.

Mrs. Stoudt’s Guided Math Presentation---Summary

“Guided Math” is an instructional approach to teaching math that Mrs. Stoudt introduced to Green Valley Elementary for this current school year. Guided Math is intended to address the needs of all students on the continuum of learning ability.

When Mrs. Stoudt first started as the principal at Green Valley, math was taught using a whole grade approach. However, she found that in math, one size does not fit all. Some learners were very high on the continuum of learning and understood a lot of material already. There were also learners who had weak areas in their math education foundations. So, several years ago, Mrs. Stoudt introduced a differentiated approach. Students were grouped into math classes based on whether their assessment showed that they were approaching grade level, on-level, or beyond level.

More recently, in an effort to meet the demands of changing math standards and to encourage students to think and perform like mathematicians, Mrs. Stoudt felt a natural evolution would be to consider other instructional methods that could be used to differentiate in a more personalized way.

Using the book “Guided Math: A Framework for Mathematics Instruction” by Laney Sammons, Mrs. Stoudt explained the ideas behind this new approach and how it works. The key idea is that students within a class are organized into small flexible groups based on evidence of student readiness for the topic.

A typical day’s math class might start with the teacher giving a short mini-lesson introducing the topic to all the students. Then the students divide into their assigned groups and rotate through a series of stations spending a scheduled amount of time at each station. At one station a small group of students would interact directly with the teacher, at a second station the students might work collaboratively with each other, and at the third station the students might work independently. Mrs. Stoudt characterized this as an example of an I do, we do, you do, process. Two of the important benefits for the students with this new approach include individual attention and an opportunity to speak and listen about how to think mathematically.

In the Question and Answer session, parents asked a number of interesting questions about how Guided Math works in practice and about the relationship between Mrs. Stoudt’s original differentiated class approach and the newer Guided Math approach.

One concern that several Green Valley parents raised was that, for students who had been in a beyond level class last year, it seemed like the pace of math instruction was slower this year.

Mrs. Stoudt, citing research from the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC), suggested that it might be reasonable to utilize Guided Math within a cluster-grouping framework. That is, to use the original differentiated classroom structure to lessen the “one size fits all” problem. And, at the same time, use the Guided Math instructional approach to provide the important small group interaction and to provide further differentiation within the classroom. There was general agreement among the parents that a combined approach was a good idea and worth considering.

One concern Mrs. Stoudt raised about a combined approach was that in differentiated classrooms, where the range of learners was less broad, teachers may be more likely to revert to a “shoot the middle” approach. That is, to not use a small group interaction model where you differentially address the needs of students across the spectrum of ability. This concern may be alleviated through ongoing teacher professional development in the Guided Math instructional approach.

Using PSSA data as one part of an evaluation criterion, Mrs. Stoudt will be looking at the results from Green Valley this year to evaluate how effectively the switch to Guided Math enhanced student growth. We look forward to hearing from Mrs. Stoudt about the results of this experiment in this new and promising instructional approach.