that she could get a quick overview of what the children understood during the
discussion.
Building Understanding of Story Problems
Keith Allen and Fernando also needed help with understanding story problems.
With Fernando, the language of the problems was confusing. He would often add
the numbers rather than subtract when comparing two things. When solving the
problem, “Maria has 6 marbles, and Mark has 10 marbles. Who has more marbles?
How many more?” he added 6 10.
For the children in this group, conversation had to be accompanied by
manipulating objects. The children needed multiple sessions to make and verbal-
ize number combinations. To clarify the language in the problems, Sarah and I
decided that acting out story problems first in the small group and then in the
large group would be a helpful strategy for Fernando, Keith Allen, and other chil-
dren as well. She would also adjust the contexts to find ones that made sense to
the children.
Next Steps
Through our discussions, Sarah became convinced of the benefits of the small-
group intervention to give the students confidence and practice in explaining
their ideas. She has chosen to continue to work with the small group of students.
She uses the small-group instruction in very particular ways to zero in on what the
students need the most. To make the schedule manageable for her as a classroom
teacher, she meets with students for ten to fifteen minutes at a time to front-load
the number that the whole group will be using. She also reviews smaller numbers
with them and the whole class. Sarah is also carrying out some of the ways we
worked out for her to document and assess the classroom conversation when I am
not there. Taking brief notes as soon afterward as possible and making sure to
keep artifacts, such as the equations that came up during the discussions, are
important to inform planning the next steps. Sarah also finds it helpful to use her
camera to document children at work.
Reflections
In my conversations with Sarah, I have tried to share additional strategies that
can engage all of her learners in the classroom discussion. For example, acting out
story problems and asking children to share and talk about their representations
What’s Another Way to Make 9?