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 Guided Math in Action

Learn how to help elementary students build mathematical profciency with

purposeful, standards-based, differentiated, engaging small-group instruction.
This best-selling book from Dr. Nicki Newton provides a repertoire of in-depth
strategies for conducting effective guided math lessons, scaffolding and managing
learning in small groups, and assessing learning. Dr. Newton shows you the
framework for guided math lessons and then helps you develop an action plan to
get started.
This fully updated second edition features helpful new sections on beliefs,
teacher moves, planning, talking and questioning, and kidwatching. It also
contains a brand new study guide to help you get the most out of the book and use
it with your colleagues. Perfect for teachers, coaches, and supervisors, this popular
resource is flled with tools you can use immediately, including anchor charts,
schedules, templates, and graphic organizers. With the practical help throughout,
you’ll be able to implement Tier 1 and 2 lessons easily. This book will help you
guide all your students to becoming more competent, fexible, and confdent
mathematicians!

Dr. Nicki Newton has been an educator for over 30 years, working both nationally
and internationally with students of all ages. She has worked on developing Math
Workshop and Guided Math Institutes around the country; visit her website at
www.drnickinewton.com. She is also an avid blogger (www.guidedmath.wordpress.
com), tweeter (@drnickimath), and pinner (www.pinterest.com/drnicki7).
 Also Available from Dr. Nicki Newton
(www.routledge.com/eyeoneducation)

Day-by-Day Math Thinking Routines in First Grade:

40 Weeks of Quick Prompts and Activities

Day-by-Day Math Thinking Routines in Second Grade:

40 Weeks of Quick Prompts and Activities

Day-by-Day Math Thinking Routines in Third Grade:

40 Weeks of Quick Prompts and Activities

Day-by-Day Math Thinking Routines in Fourth Grade:

40 Weeks of Quick Prompts and Activities

Day-by-Day Math Thinking Routines in Fifth Grade:

40 Weeks of Quick Prompts and Activities

Leveling Math Workstations in Grades K–2:

Strategies for Differentiated Practice

Daily Math Thinking Routines in Action:

Distributed Practices Across the Year

Mathematizing Your School:

Creating a Culture for Math Success
Co-authored by Janet Nuzzie

Math Problem Solving in Action:

Getting Students to Love Word Problems, Grades K–2

Math Problem Solving in Action:

Getting Students to Love Word Problems, Grades 3–5

Fluency Doesn’t Just Happen with Addition and Subtraction:

Strategies and Models for Teaching the Basic Facts
With Alison Mello and Ann Elise Record

Math Workshop in Action:

Strategies for Grades K–5

Math Running Records in Action:

A Framework for Assessing Basic Fact Fluency in Grades K–5

Math Workstations in Action:

Powerful Possibilities for Engaged Learning in Grades 3–5
 Support Material

The templates listed below are also available as free downloadable PDFs, so you
can easily print them for your own use. They can be found on the book’s product
page on our website, www.routledge.com/9780367245740. Click on the “Support
Material” link to access the free downloads.

Figure 6.3 Kidwatching Notes

Figure 6.4 Anecdotal Notes
Figure 7.11 Student Refection
Figure 7.12 Exit Slip
Figure 7.14 Student Refection on Test
Figure 7.17 Teacher Self Check-In About Assessment
Figure 7.18 Keeping Parents in the Loop
Figure 7.19 Recognizing Student Achievement Along the Way
Figure 8.3 Quick Plan
Figures 8.4–8.9 Guided Math Planning Templates
Figure 8.10 Guided Math Planning Sheet
Figure 8.11 Differentiated Lessons
Figure 10.7 Talk Refection Rubric
Figure 11.5 Planning Form
Figures 12.8–12.9 Certifcates
Figure 14.15 Blank Template
 Guided Math
in Action
Building Each Student’s Mathematical
Proficiency with Small-Group Instruction
Second edition

Dr. Nicki Newton

Second edition published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2022 Taylor & Francis

The right of Nicki Newton to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted
by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered

trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to
infringe.

First edition published by Routledge 2013

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-24574-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-24575-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-28325-3 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9780429283253

Typeset in Palatino
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
 Contents

Foreword for Guided Math Second Edition ............................................................ viii

Preface ........................................................................................................................ x
Meet the Author ...................................................................................................... xiii
Acknowledgments ................................................................................................... xiv

1 An Introduction: Guided Math����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1

2 Beliefs That Frame Guided Math����������������������������������������������������������������������� 11

3 Five Teacher Moves for Small-Group Success������������������������������������������������� 21

4 Guided Math in a Numerate Environment ������������������������������������������������������ 33

5 Managing the Math Workshop ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 49

6 Kidwatching ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 59

7 Balanced Assessment: The Key to Grouping Students

for Guided Math���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 69

8 Planning, Planning, Planning ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 89

9 Building Mathematical Profciency ����������������������������������������������������������������� 109

10 Questioning in the Guided Math Group�������������������������������������������������������� 123

11 What Are the Other Kids Doing? ��������������������������������������������������������������������� 135

12 More About Math Workstations����������������������������������������������������������������������� 167

13 The First 20 Days of Math Workshop: Setting the Stage

for Effective Guided Math Groups ������������������������������������������������������������������ 179

14 Book Study Guide ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 197

References ................................................................................................................ 215

◆ vii
 Foreword for Guided
Math Second Edition
In 2013 while attending a math conference, I hung on every word of the keynote
speaker, Dr. Nicki Newton. I had never met her before, but I remember think-
ing immediately that knowing her would change me. I had never heard anyone
so well versed in educational research and so capable of making it accessible to
teachers. She spouted off researchers and studies effortlessly from memory and
easily connected them to classroom practice. What? Who does that? Dr. Nicki
does, and she does it effortlessly. As she shared ideas from her book, Guided Math
in Action, I knew that I had to have that book. I had to read it and I had to know
it. I had to bring it to life in my classrooms and in my district. That encounter
changed my life and my professional practice forever. Since then, it has changed
the experience of math instruction for countless schools, teachers, and students
across the country.
When I got my copy of Guided Math in Action, I devoured it. Dr. Nicki’s passion
was inspiring, and her words leapt off the page. It was evident that her ideas were
grounded in best practices and driven by a genuine desire to help teachers meet
the needs of all learners. As I read, I knew that what I was learning would serve as a
lever to achieve equity in math class long before it became en vogue. The idea was
to focus on what students could do and go from there to guide them through the
learning trajectory. It was a way to actualize Vygotsky’s zone of proximal develop-
ment. It was about making informed instructional decisions based on evidence of
student learning. It was about teachers knowing the math and how to teach it for
understanding. It was about creating safe spaces for students to think, wonder,
make connections, solve problems, and build competency in the fve strands of
math profciency. It was about providing a road map to give students mathemati-
cal power by focusing on agency, ownership, independence, and self-refection. It
was practically perfect in every way and I wanted to see it grow.
After developing a graduate course where Guided Math in Action served as
the text, I saw the model expand to many districts in my state. As more teachers
were implementing Math Workshop and Guided Math, the transformations were
incredible. Over time, I observed how teachers refned their practice and how they
made Guided Math work in their classrooms. Among their innovations were uti-
lizing menus in lieu of station rotations, shifting from “I Can” statements to “I Am
Learning” statements, and leveraging technology to capture student thinking and
make data immediately actionable. I also noticed some trends in the questions that
emerged as they dove deeper into differentiation, personalization, and progress
monitoring. Typically, questions focused on the same areas: collecting useful data
during guided math lessons, forming and managing groups (which change fre-
quently), skillful questioning, and overall planning and provisioning.

viii ◆
 The second edition of Guided Math in Action brings us the answers to these ques-
tions and more! Dr. Nicki has gone back to the research to help ensure that our
efforts to implement this model yield high returns for all students. She debunks
the misconception that Guided Math involves the creation of “low,” “middle,” and
“high” groups, and she provides even more evidence of the power we have to use
this model as a lever for equity. She updates and refreshes our well-loved chapters,
and brings us new chapters that provide illustrative examples, address our burn-
ing questions, and offer clarity in areas where we need it most. She highlights the
importance and power of kidwatching, reminds us to value the whole child, and
examines the danger of placing labels on students. In short, she elevates her previ-
ous work by once again bringing us the research and best practices in practical,
accessible terms.
Guided Math in Action 2nd Edition is what we need to take our work to the
next level. It is flled with helpful tools, examples, and anecdotes from the many
classrooms that Dr. Nicki has visited. It is refective of the growth of her vision,
experience, and research and is truly a signifcant extension of the original. It is a
testament to her commitment to continuous learning. It has everything we loved
about the frst edition, everything we were waiting to learn, and things we may
not have thought about but will be thrilled to know! The second edition provides
an even clearer roadmap to develop, grow, and sustain a robust, effective, support-
ive, and productive math environment. Through her work, Dr. Nicki has left an
indelible impact, one that will infuence generations of learners and practitioners.
For some, this book will be the beginning of an incredible journey. For others, it
will be the springboard to enhance and refne what they have already built. For all
of us, this book further affrms the value of meeting with students in small groups,
knowing their strengths as learners, and nurturing their mathematical power by
offering them a learning environment that allows them to reach their full potential.
Dr. Alison Mello

Foreword for Guided Math Second Edition ◆ ix

 Preface

Let’s take a peek into an urban classroom:

There are ffteen boys and seventeen girls. There are a variety of students, from different
socio-economic backgrounds, different countries, different frst languages, different schooling
experiences, and different attitudes about school. Some of them were born in the U.S. and
others were not. Some of them have been to school since pre-K, and some have never been to a
formal school before. Some are working on grade level and others are just beginning to learn
basic concepts. Some come from single-parent homes and others come from two-parent homes.
Some have parents who are married, and others have parents who are divorced. Some are foster
children. Some have parents that are in jail. Some are homeless. This is a typical class in a
large urban city. While a few of the students have formal IEPs, a few others have undiagnosed
learning disabilities.

The students are talkative, inquisitive, and full of wonder. This diverse group of
learners need an environment where they can all learn and reach grade-level stand-
ards. But this is no one-size-fts-all situation. Most of the children are the same age,
but a few are repeating the grade and a few more were held back, and so some
students are older than others in the class. The teacher wants to teach everyone.
Guided Math—working with students in small, fexible, temporary groups—can
help the teacher reach that goal. Guided Math gives us the opportunity to teach
diverse students in their zone of proximal development, reaching toward high
standards for all. In rural areas, there might not be as many students from differ-
ent countries and different language backgrounds, but there is still a tremendous
amount of diversity.
The frst edition of Guided Math in Action (Newton, 2013) discussed:
• Introduction: Lessons, Goals, Beliefs
• Numerate Environment: Math Workshop
• Managing Math Workshop: Getting Started, Rules, Consequences, and
Rewards, Routines, Anchor Charts, Schedules, Teacher Toolkit
• Forming Groups: Flexible Groups, Record Keeping
• Balanced Assessment: Pre-assessment, Ongoing, Evaluative
• Framework: Before Lesson, During, After
• Building Mathematical Profciency: Conceptual Understanding, Procedural
Fluency, Strategic Competence, Adaptive Reasoning, Mathematical
Disposition
• What Are the Other Kids Doing? Math Centers, Grouping, Types of Math
Workstations, Logistics
• The First 20 Days: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4

x ◆
The book has helped teachers think about how they assess, teach, and use action-
able data so that students become competent, confdent, fexible mathematicians.
Seven years have passed since that frst book came out. I want to add to that ongo-
ing conversation in this second edition. There are new parts of the discussion:
• Beliefs
• Five Teacher Moves
• Planning
• Talking and Questioning in Guided Math Groups
• Book Study Guide
This second edition is based on my refections, research and work with students
and teachers around the U.S. and Canada. There are many similarities between
the frst edition and the expanded second edition, because the overall instructional
strategy of Guided Math is the same. If you are familiar with the frst edition of
Guided Math in Action, you may fnd the following table helpful:

First Edition Second Edition

Chapter 1 Guided Math: An Chapter 1 An Introduction: Guided
Introduction Math
Not in First Edition Chapter 2 Beliefs That Frame Guided
Math
Not in First Edition Chapter 3 Five Teacher Moves for
Small-Group Success
Chapter 2 Guided Math in a Numerate Chapter 4 Guided Math in Numerate
Environment Environment
Chapter 3 Managing the Math Chapter 5 Managing the Math
Workshop Workshop
Not in First Edition Chapter 6 Kidwatching
Chapter 5 Balanced Assessment Chapter 7 Balanced Assessment: The
Key to Grouping Students for Guided
Math
Chapter 4 (Forming Guided Math Chapter 8 Planning, Planning,
Groups) is part of Chapters 2, 5, and 8 Planning
Chapter 6 A Framework for Guided
Math Lesons
Chapter 7 Building Mathematical Chapter 9 Building Mathematical
Profciency in Guided Math Groups Profciency
Not in frst edition Chapter 10 Questioning in the Guided
Math Group
Chapter 8 What Are the Other Kids Chapter 11 What Are the Other Kids
Doing? Doing?
Chapter 12
More About Math Workstations

Preface ◆ xi
 Chapter 9 Chapter 13
First 20 Days The First 20 Days of Math Workshop:
Setting the Stage for Effective Guided
Math Groups
Not in frst edition Chapter 14
Book Study Guide

The goal of Guided Math is for students to become profcient mathematicians

who have conceptual understanding, procedural fuency, strategic competence,
adaptive reasoning, and mathematical confdence (National Research Council,
2001). Guided Math aims to get students comfortable with numbers, operations,
and mathematical concepts so that they can independently work with them in
new and different contexts. In guided math groups, students can work on both
developing content knowledge and “habits of mind” and “ways of doing” math.
This book can serve as a handbook to help you think about and implement the
different components of Guided Math. This book will help teachers to create pur-
poseful, rich, standards-based, engaging small guided math groups. Instead of
talking about one specifc type of guided math group, this book will provide you
with a repertoire of strategies to create small groups and suggestions for how to
teach them well. This book is written for everybody who is trying to teach all
their children. This book is for those of us who want to attend to the needs, wants,
desires, and passions of learning that our individual students have. This book is
written for all those who believe that every child not only can but will learn. More
specifcally, this book is for
• Classroom teachers in grades K–6
• Tier 1 and Tier 2 response-to-intervention support
• Special educators differentiating math instruction, across grade levels, and
through inclusion
• English language learner (ELL) teachers who are supporting students
learning not only a second language (English) but also a third language
(math)
• Math leads, math departmental teachers, instructional coaches, curriculum
directors, and building administrators
Moreover, this book is written for all those teachers who never stop learning—all
those teachers who believe we can stretch our thinking a bit more, look at some
things a bit differently, attend to a few new things, and revisit old ones with a new
perspective. We can grow a little bit more every day.

xii ◆ Preface
 Meet the Author

Dr. Nicki Newton is an education consultant who

works with schools and districts around the U.S.
and Canada on K–8 math curriculum. She has
been an educator for over 30 years, working both
nationally and internationally, with students of
all ages. Dr. Nicki has an Ed.M. and an Ed.D.
from Teachers College, Columbia University.
She is greatly interested in teaching and learning
practices around the world and has researched
education in Denmark, Guatemala, and India.
She has written several books, including just fn-
ishing a series by grade level on Guided Math
Lessons in Action. She is excited about currently
being a part of the curriculum team for the new McGraw-Hill Reveal Math series.
Having spent the frst part of her career as a literacy and social studies specialist,
Dr. Nicki built on those frameworks to inform her math work. She believes that
math is intricately intertwined with reading, writing, listening, and speaking. She
has worked on developing Math Workshop and Guided Math Institutes around
the country. Dr. Nicki works with teachers, coaches, and administrators to make
math come alive by considering the powerful impact of building a community of
mathematicians that make meaning of real math together. When students do real
math, they learn it, they own it, they understand it, and they can do it—every one
of them.
Dr. Nicki’s website is www.drnickinewton.com. She is also an avid blogger
(www.guidedmath.wordpress.com and www.mathrunningrecords.com), tweeter
(@drnickimath), and pinner (www.pinterest.com/drnicki7). If you are doing a
book study, Dr. Nicki offers a free booktalk to the study group on any of her books.

◆ xiii
 Acknowledgments

To my family To my editor
Thank you for being there for me Lauren Davis, thank you! You are the
always. Thank you for your daily best editor ever. You are patient and
support, unending love, and uplift- kind. You gently push me into new
ing cheerleading. I appreciate all of books and hold my hand along the
your love, kindness, generosity, sup- way. You advise me and support me.
port, words of encouragement, text You are an offcial member of my fan
messages, and voicemails. My cousins club, and I feel it whenever I talk to
Clinese and Tracye J., my Tia Mary and you. Thank you for believing in me,
my Tio Bill, my brother Marvin and my believing in my ideas, and believing in
sister Sharon, and my host of nieces, my books. Thank you for appreciating
nephews, and cousins, thank you! my messy, so non-linear process. No
one could ask for a better editor! You
are a superstar and I appreciate you so
very much!
To my colleagues (aka friends) both To the Routledge team
near and far It takes a team to put a book together.
I learn every day from working, talk- Thank you to the proofreaders, copyed-
ing, being, and knowing you all. Some itors, art directors, cover designer, mar-
of you are close by or just a phone call keting team, and everybody else who
away, and we talk on the phone and made this book possible. I couldn’t do
share stories, push each other’s think- it without you, and all of your help is
ing, and laugh out loud often. Others much appreciated!
I’ve met only once, at a conference: a
brief encounter that lasts a lifetime,
and short conversations that have
stuck with me. You tell me of ways I
have helped you, and I want you to
know that you too have helped me.
Stories help us grow. I’ve enjoyed the
hundreds of experiences I have had
with educators around the U.S. and
Canada.

xiv ◆
 I would also like to offer a special
thanks to my dear friend Dr. Alison
Mello, who so graciously wrote the
foreword to this book. Thank you for
pushing my ideas and challenging my
thinking, and for your support through
it all. I appreciate you and cherish our
friendship.
I would also like to thank my cousin,
Jamil Lawyer for creating some phe-
nomenal illustrations for the book. He
is so kind, generous with his time, and
very creative. I appreciate him very
much.

Acknowledgments ◆ xv
 1
An Introduction
Guided Math

DOI: 10.4324/9780429283253-1 ◆ 1
 Teaching mathematics is about facilitating mathematical development. This means that you
cannot get all learners to the same landmarks at the same time, in the same way, any more
than you can get all toddlers to walk at the same time, in the same way! All you can do is pro-
vide a rich environment, turn your classroom into a mathematical community, and support
the development of each child in the journey toward the horizon.
(Fosnot, 2007, p. 15)

A while ago, I was working with a little boy named Lulu on some math problems. He
is up for most mathematical challenges even though he struggles a bit. He is quick and
sharp and often gets it right away, and if not, usually after a few tries. He has a founda-
tional understanding but very little automaticity. You know, those kids that know their
fves by counting up on their fngers. So, I said to him, “Get ready, Lulu, we are about
to do some tricky problems.” He looked up at me, with a broad smile and said, “My
middle name is Tricky.” I laughed out loud and said, “Well then, let’s begin.”
I think Guided Math is Tricky too. It has its ins and outs and hard-to-get-to
spaces. We have to stick with it, keep trying, and enter it with a sense of adventure.
We have to lay it out, have a plan, and follow it. And when the going gets a lit-
tle rough, we have to persist—much like we teach the children to do in our small
guided math groups.
Guided Math itself is a place where we get at the Tricky parts of math. We invite the
students to a front row seat, but as a participant, not a spectator. We want them to get
in the game, play hard, and learn lots. We invite them to talk, to show their thinking, to
question others, and to engage deeply in rich mathematical conversations. We want them
to get on friendly terms with numbers, to take risks, and to go from triumph to triumph
at that kidney-shaped table. We build mathematicians one problem at time in these small
spaces. Let’s take a look now at one of those lessons in action (see Figures 1.1–1.2).
A Guided Math Lesson in Action
Welcome to room 307. The students are in the middle of Math Workshop. Mrs. Chi has been
working with her math coach to fnd meaningful ways to engage her third graders. It is the
middle of the year and they are working on capacity. She has a diverse class of students; today
she has created a heterogenous group of students to work on learning about milliliters and liters.
Mrs. Chi wants students to do, see, and feel measurement rather than just working on a
worksheet about measurement or doing an activity with Peter Liter (Gallon Man’s cousin).
Mrs. Chi wants her students to play around with measurement in a real way. By having

An Introduction ◆ 3
Figure 1.1 Guided Math Lesson Part 1

Introduction of Concrete Explorations:

Open Measurement Problems

Launch Teacher: Today we are going to do a measurement

(Intro/Mini-lesson) activity (make sure you send home letters about any
allergies before you do this and get them signed by
parents for participation).

Vocabulary: milliliters, liters, capacity, measure

Math talk: We used ______ ml.

Today we are going to talk about making fruit
punch. Grandma has 3 ingredients. She has some
orange juice, some pineapple juice, and some
cranberry juice. She wants to make a half liter of
punch. If a liter is 1000 ml, what is a half liter?

Carl: 500 ml
Teacher: What could some possibilities for the recipe be?

Model Students taste-test and work together to come up

(student work period) with a recipe for what the punch could be. They talk
about what they like, what they don’t like, and what
the strong favor should be. They then try out the
recipe at the table with the teacher asking questions.

Record of Thinking
1st Try 2nd Try

Checking for Teacher: Who can tell me about one of your recipes?
Understanding

Maite: We tried 100 ml apple juice, 250 ml of orange

juice, and 150 ml of pineapple juice.

Ted: We liked it!

4 ◆ An Introduction
Figure 1.2 Concrete Student Activity

Concrete Student Activity

Guided Practice/ The teacher begins to ask students questions about their
Checking for mixtures.
Understanding
Maria: First we tried mainly orange juice (400 ml)
(share) and little bit of pineapple (50 ml) and apple (50 ml).
We liked it but we wanted to try something with more
pineapple.

Terri: We did a lot of pineapple (250 ml) and 200 of

orange and 50 of apple.

Mike: I don’t like apple so we did 250 of pineapple and

249 of orange and 1 ml of apple! (the kids giggle)

Teacher: What did you notice while looking at the

measuring cup?

Maria: I noticed how much a liter is.

Teacher: What are some other things that you all

noticed?

Set up for Teacher: What is the math that we have been working on
Independent today?
Practice
Tyler: Measurement.

Maria: We were working with milliliters.

Teacher: What is a milliliter?

Dan: It is a way to measure liquid.

Hong: A milliliter is a small amount.

Teacher: You all did great today. I like the way you
listened to each other, shared your thinking, and worked
together. We are going to continue working with the
measuring cups in the workstations and also do some
drawings. Are there any questions? Ok, if not you all
may go to your workstations.

An Introduction ◆ 5
the students do this at the guided math table, she can guide them through the activity as
they explore and discover different things about measurement.
Mrs. Chi then dismisses this group and begins to circulate around the room, where the
other children are working on differentiated, standards-based center activities. At the
frst table, there are four children working on subtraction problems with base ten blocks.
At the second table, there are six children and they are working in pairs playing a meas-
urement concentration game. They have to match the unit of measure with an item that
you would measure that unit in. At the third table, the children are working on problem
solving with manipulatives. At the fourth table, the children are working at a “hot topics
center” reviewing money. They are playing a money match card game where they match
the amount to the coins. At the ffth table, the children are playing a game where they roll
dice and round the number to the nearest ten, using the beaded number line as a support
if needed.
Mrs. Chi is walking around the room taking anecdotals on three children whom she has
chosen to observe for the day. She is getting ready to give the Big Switch Signal, where she
will play the xylophone (which is her clean-up signal), so that all the children will quickly
and quietly prepare to come to the rug to discuss their math work for the day. Mrs. Chi
makes a written note to herself that tomorrow she defnitely wants to do a math interview
with Daniel about subtracting triple-digit numbers, because she is thinking he might be
ready to move to a more challenging group.
This scenario shows the benefts of a guided math group. Mrs. Chi understands
the benefts of differentiated, targeted, standards-based practice. In this structure,
she has the fexibility to pull small groups and provide instruction at their cur-
rent level of understanding while the other students stay engaged in meaningful
practice in standards-based math centers. This lesson also reinforces the idea that
guided math small-group experiences are about the experience. It is an opportu-
nity to learn about math by doing it. It’s not a worksheet, a test, or even just a game
or perfunctory activity: “We need to reconceptualize small groups as meeting
places for thinking about, doing, refecting on, and talking about [math]” (Wright
& Hoonan, 2019, p. 3).

Summary of the Guided Math Lesson

During this guided math lesson, Mrs. Chi worked with a group of mathematicians
to build conceptual understanding. Her focus for the lesson was for the students
to get a hands-on feel for measurement. So often, this is taught at a procedural
level, with students being told about it rather than doing it. However, oftentimes
students only know how to do it but cannot explain what they are doing. So, with
this group, she dives right into getting students to experience measurement with
milliliters by doing a hands-on activity.
The introduction of her lesson was quick. She went over the vocabulary and
the goal of the lesson, and then the students started doing the math. That is what
Guided Math is all about: it is about students DOING math. She let the students
engage in a guided discovery process where she was there to support their won-
derings and activities. They also had to explain their thinking. Then Mrs. Chi con-
cluded with a share period.

6 ◆ An Introduction
Figure 1.3 Benefts of Guided Math

Benefts of Guided Math

Benefts for Students Benefts for Teachers

Students receive targeted, standards- Teachers get an opportunity to tailor

based, rigorous instruction that instruction to the individual needs of
allows them to build conceptual their students
understanding, procedural fuency,
and problem-solving skills

Students develop as confdent, Teachers get an opportunity to focus

profcient, fexible mathematicians in on specifc content, strategies, and
in a supportive, scaffolded skill sets with small groups
environment

Students have the opportunity to Teachers get to talk with individual

develop and use math strategies that students about math and hear their
allow them to become comfortable mathematical thinking
with different types of problems

Students get a chance to think and Teachers get to observe students as

talk out loud. They get to express and they do the math
explain themselves with visuals, in
writing and with the spoken word.

Students get a chance to listen to Teachers engage in ongoing

each other and read the work of observations and assessments
others. They have to reason about that inform their interactions with
the arguments of others and make individual students and the group
sense of them and respond to them in
respectful ways.

Students experience ongoing

successful moments that contribute
to their confdence levels for
encountering new problems (they
build a repertoire of strategies for
dealing with numbers)

Inspired by Fountas & Pinnell (1996), Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All
Children.
Source: Inspired by Fountas and Pinnell (1996).

An Introduction ◆ 7
Goal of Guided Math
The goal of Guided Math is for students to become confdent, competent, and curi-
ous mathematicians. Guided Math aims to get students comfortable with numbers
and operations and mathematical concepts so that they can independently work
with them in new and different contexts independently (see Figure 1.3). Guided
Math is also a space to grow student communication so that they can listen to oth-
ers, consider ideas, refect, and engage in lively discussions.
In guided math groups, students can work on both developing content knowl-
edge (standards) and “habits of mind” and “ways of doing” math (mathematical
practices/processes). Guided Math provides “close encounters” with our students.
It allows teachers to look at the work they are doing, listen closely to what they
are thinking, and probe deeply into their inner thoughts. The proximity we have
with our students in a guided math group provides us with the chance to get up
close and personal with our students, their talk, and their work so that we can see,
hear, feel, and know what they can do and then what we need to do next (Wright
& Hoonan, 2019). Guided math groups allow us to look through the window to see
what’s next in students’ learning journeys (see Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.4 Upgrading Guided Math

Guided Math Group Upgraded Guided Math Group

Teacher selected or program selected A variety of lessons pulled from additional
texts; although it shouldn’t center on
resources; focus is on hands-on activities
leveled materials it often does and making sense of the math
Works/Activities often leveled by Variety of activities based on student
readiness only needs, interest, student choice
Emphasis on teaching kids how to Emphasis on doing, understanding, and
get the answer explaining the math
Unfortunately groups are mainly Groups are specifc, targeted, and
static fexible; often changing
Groups only formed by teacher Groups are planned and sometimes
spontaneously formed; students can
select to come to a group; students can
ask to form a group
Readiness determines group A variety of factors inform group formation;
membership evidence based on a variety of kidwatching
observations and assessment opportunities
The approach does not typically rely This approach relies on observing students
on whole group instruction, math- throughout math workshop (mini-lesson,
alouds, shared math experiences to guided math group, workstations, sharing
group students and conferring experiences) to group students
This approach places teacher talk or This approach emphasizes students making
what’s being taught in the guided meaning of the math together through
math group lesson, at the center of hands-on activities, conversations, and
guided math lessons rigorous experiences and immediate feedback
Source: Inspired by Wright & Hoonan (2019, p. 15).

8 ◆ An Introduction
Key Points
• Goals of Guided Math
• Benefts of Guided Math
• Upgrading Guided Math
Summary
Guided Math provides a powerful opportunity for students to learn math. As
Yates reminds us, “Guided [math] is more than a level and a kidney table” (cited
in Wright & Hoonan, 2019, p. 24). In small groups, we can meet learners where
they are and take them to where they need to go. We get everyone talking within
and among themselves. We coach learning. We facilitate thinking. We orchestrate
masterful conversations. Everyone is invited to engage as thinking mathemati-
cians. We get to hear how others are doing it and also to hear ourselves make
sense of the math that we are doing. We also get immediate feedback so we can
stay on track. It is a time for students to make more and more sense of math in its
growing complexity at a pace that is appropriate for them. Guided Math is good
for all students. It allows everyone to reach their next level of learning and become
profcient in the grade-level standards.
Refection Questions
1. Currently, in your class, do all of your students feel like they can learn math?
2. What do you do with the students who are frustrated?
3. Does everyone participate in mathematical conversations? Who does, how,
and under what terms?
4. How do you promote perseverance in your classroom?

An Introduction ◆ 9
 2
Beliefs That Frame
Guided Math

DOI: 10.4324/9780429283253-2 ◆ 11
 If we are deliberately growing and changing as professionals, our cutting-edge beliefs are often
ahead of our practices. We grow new beliefs and then strive to live into them.
(Wright & Hoonan, 2019, p. 33)

Guided Math is about teaching students to be profcient, engaged, rigorous math-

ematicians (see Figure 2.1). In order to do this, you must lead small-group lessons
that have great launches, supportive structures of coaching, and engaging activi-
ties. In a guided math group, students are making meaning of the math together,
they are talking about the math, they are reasoning and thinking out loud, they
are modeling for one another, they are wrestling with ideas and being vulnerable,
and they are constructing mathematical concepts and discovering new things. In
guided math groups, students develop math muscles: “the idea of bulking up our
skills and strategies so that we are more profcient [mathematicians]” (adapted
from a discussion about readers from Wright & Hoonan, 2019).
Importance of Meeting Students Where They Are
Guided Math allows you to meet students where they are so you can take them
where they need to go. Guided Math allows you to scaffold learning, so that even
if you are on page 72 of the math book, you can teach everyone what they need
to be ready for the current concept. So, let’s say page 72 is teaching double plus
one facts. You already know that some students aren’t quite ready for this. Some
students don’t know their doubles. Some students don’t even know their facts
through ten. Some students don’t even know their numbers!
A guided math structure allows you to pull students in small groups and teach
them in their zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978). We already know
that everyone is not on the same page at the same time. Although everyone is
working on the big idea within a particular math strand, they are working at their
instructional level. For example, double plus one is a math strategy that comes
up in a particular lineup of teaching math strategies. As a knowledgeable teacher,
you would know who is working on make ten facts, who is ready for doubles, and
who is ready for double plus one, so everyone is working on fuency and students
are working toward the grade-level fuency in a way that provides a frm founda-
tion. Thus, eventually everyone will learn double plus one facts, but you’ll do frst
things frst.

Beliefs That Frame Guided Math ◆ 13

Figure 2.1 Beliefs

Beliefs about Teaching and Learning of Mathematics

Beliefs about Students and Beliefs about Teachers Beliefs About Developing
Learning Math and Teaching Math Mathematical Profciency
Children learn at their own Teachers need to Math should be taught
pace (like Leo the Lion) have solid content at the concrete, pictorial,
knowledge as well as and then abstract levels
a strong knowledge of
student development
and learning trajectories
Children have different Teachers need to make Math should be taught
learning styles (visual, connections with real with an emphasis on
auditory, kinesthetic) and life by contextualizing conceptual understanding,
these need to be addressed all the math they teach procedural fuency, and
problem solving skills
Children have a variety Teachers need to fnd Math should be
of intelligences (logical ways to teach children, contextualized so it
mathematical, musical, if the children are not makes sense
spatial, linguistic, naturalist, learning the way they
interpersonal, intrapersonal, are teaching
bodily-kinesthetic), some
more dominant than others
(Gardner, 1983)
All Children CAN Learn Teachers should
Math provide some small
guided math group
instruction
Smart is Learned (Resnick Teachers should
Research) differentiate learning
(process, product and
content) based on
Tomlinson (1999, 2001,
2004)
Affect MUST be acknowledged Teachers need to work
in the math learning process— with children to set
because learning math can be specifc
very emotional learning goals
Students should refect on their
knowledge bases, skill sets and
set personal math goals
Fundamental belief is that:
Every child has the right to
become a fexible, competent,
confdent mathematician!

14 ◆ Beliefs That Frame Guided Math

Importance of Tapping Into Multiple Learning Styles and Intelligences
Children’s learning styles and multiple intelligences are considered in the plan-
ning and implementation of guided math lessons. Diverse instructional strat-
egies are used that integrate linguistic, musical, visual, logical-mathematical,
digital, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal approaches (Gard-
ner, 1983). Teachers should have a toolkit of songs, poems, chants, manipula-
tives, charts, diagrams, and various activities. You might teach the students a
concept through a song one day, and the next you might be playing with the
base ten blocks or drawing pictures with different colored pencils to represent
problems.

Importance of Building Mathematical Confdence

Children’s disposition toward math is considered and valued during the design
of guided math lessons. Children are taught to acknowledge and work through
frustrating moments while learning to become confdent mathematicians. We
talk about how sometimes you have to “wrestle with the math problem.” We
talk about what it means to “stick with it.” We talk about “stepping away for
a minute” and then being sure to come back to the problem. In guided math
groups, the children and the teacher discuss “what’s tough” and “what’s easy.”
Students talk about themselves as learners, what they “get” and what they are
still in the “process of getting.” Students become refective learners who set goals
for themselves.

Learning Math
The guided math lessons I discuss in this book are framed around the fve
NCTM content standards, as mentioned earlier, as well as the fve NCTM pro-
cess standards (2000). The fve content standards are Number Sense, Algebra,
Geometry, Measurement, and Data Analysis, and the fve process standards
and eight practice standards include Tools, Models, Communication, Structure,
Patterns, Precision, Connections, Reasoning, Problem Solving, and Representa-
tion (NCTM, 2000; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices
(CCSSM)). The process standards are woven throughout students’ immersion in
the content area; for example, in Number Sense, the tasks require the children
to communicate their learning, make connections with their lives, reason, solve
problems, and represent their thinking. Guided math lessons are created so that
students make meaning of their learning by engaging with the materials, work-
ing with their peers, and being guided by adults as they construct knowledge
(NCTM, 2000).

Active Learning and Math

Guided math lessons and math workstations are based on the theories of active
learning (Bonwell & Eison, 1991) and constructivism (Piaget, 1972; Vygotsky,
1978). Active learning is the umbrella phrase for ways of teaching that empha-
size the learner as the center of activity. Active learning “derives from two basic
assumptions: (1) that learning is by nature an active endeavor and (2) that different
people learn in different ways” (Meyers & Jones, 1993).

Beliefs That Frame Guided Math ◆ 15

 Moreover, in an active learning environment, students and teachers are working
together as a community of learners, committed to a shared vision of understand-
ing and building knowledge together.

Students are involved in more than listening, less emphasis is placed on

transmitting information and more on developing students’ skills, students
are involved in higher-order thinking (analysis, synthesis, evaluation),
students are engaged in activities (e.g., reading discussing, writing), and
greater emphasis is placed on students’ exploration of their own attitudes
and values.
(Bonwell & Eison, 1991, p. 2)

While engaging in guided math groups, students engage with the material and
therefore are better able to understand and recall what they have studied (Bruner,
1961). In guided math groups, it is important that the activities are both physically
and cognitively engaging and that the students are accountable for their learning;
it is important that they demonstrate their engagement with the material through
their math artifacts and/or through discussion (Mayer, 2004).

Constructivism and Math

Guided math lessons are also based on a constructivist approach to learning
mathematics. Students are expected to construct their learning through engaging
interactions with the materials, their peers, and their teachers. Students work with
their teacher who guides them, asks important questions, and provides necessary
feedback on their attempts so they can make the necessary corrections and build
a deeper understanding of the math concepts. The learning spirals, and children
build on prior knowledge as they engage in new experiences (Dewey, 1933, 1998;
Piaget, 1972; Vygotsky, 1978; Bruner, 1973, 1990). In the guided math group, the
students should spend most of the time doing math rather than listening to the
teacher talk about math.
Experiences are scaffolded in a way to maximize learning opportunities, so stu-
dents are working in their zone of proximal development, meaning that they are
working at a level that is just right—not too easy and not too diffcult (Vygotsky,
1978). Through interaction with more capable peers, adults who are facilitating
their learning and artifacts (in this case, appropriately selected materials such as
manipulatives, books, and computer programs), students make meaning of the
math (Vygotsky, 1978).

Teaching Math So That Children Understand It

It is important to guide students through a cycle of engagement that includes
exploring ideas at the concrete, pictorial, and abstract levels. It is very important
for teachers to consider ways to introduce ideas at the concrete level and then to
introduce the pictorial level before moving to the abstract level of understanding.
Children need many opportunities to develop understanding by actually working
at the concrete level of concepts frst. Van De Walle (2007) points out that there can
be multiple levels of concrete learning.

16 ◆ Beliefs That Frame Guided Math

 For instance, when learning place value, students should have the opportunity
to construct tens and ones with beans and sticks before they work with commer-
cial base ten blocks; in this way they develop the understanding of the concept
from scratch. After students have had many opportunities to do these kinds of
activities in workstations, they should be given more opportunities to represent
their thinking with base ten blocks and then to draw out their thinking and to
make connections between those models and the symbolic representation.
Diferentiated Instruction
Differentiated instruction is one of the pillars that provide the foundation for effec-
tive math workstations. As Coco Aguirre (my mentor teacher) taught me, “If a
student doesn’t learn the way you teach, then teach the way they learn.” This is a
simple but powerful truth. Meet the children where they are and then take them to
the next level. For me, differentiation is about always asking myself, “If they aren’t
getting it, what can I do differently?”
Tomlinson (1999) speaks of how differentiated instruction results in academi-
cally responsive classrooms. In this type of classroom, teachers are aware of the
academic levels of their students and create curriculum designed to respond to
their needs. Tomlinson stated that

at its most basic level, differentiating instruction means “shaking up” what
goes on in the classroom so that students have multiple options for taking in
information, making sense of ideas, and expressing what they learn. In other
words, a differentiated classroom provides different avenues to acquiring con-
tent, to processing or making sense of ideas, and to developing products so
that each student can learn effectively.
(2001)

While differentiation “advocates attending to students as individuals, it does not

assume a separate assignment for each learner” (Tomlinson, 2001). In the guided
math group, the teacher is paying attention; Saravello writes about how “even
though children are grouped, I still need to see the students as individuals and
differentiated my responses in the course of the small-group work to meet their
needs” (2010). Tomlinson uses the term “orderly fexibility” to unpack the idea
that there are lots of balls moving in the air, but they are not going out of control
everywhere (2017). “Differentiation needs to be student-centered, rooted in assess-
ment, and dynamic” Serravallo (2010). We are constantly adjusting our teaching in
response to what students are telling and showing us in their work and talk.
Teachers who differentiate must take the time to get to know their students well.
They have to understand them as people and learners and to know what moti-
vates them to reach their goals. Robb notes that “differentiation is a way of teach-
ing, it’s not a program or a package of worksheets. It asks teachers to know their
students well so they can provide each one with experiences and tasks that will
improve learning” (2008, p. 13).
In the guided math group, children work on mathematical ideas based on their
readiness, interest level, and choice. Teachers differentiate the content, the process,
and the products as they design the guided math lessons and math workstations.

Beliefs That Frame Guided Math ◆ 17

Differentiated guided math groups and math workstations not only beneft chil-
dren directly but are a major component of classroom management, because chil-
dren that are being appropriately challenged are neither frustrated from the work
being too hard nor bored from the work being too easy. Children who are work-
ing in their zone of proximal development are much more likely to stay on task
because they are interested and able to do the work at hand.
Differentiation allows the teacher to create activities that scaffold success,
build skills (meeting the varying needs of different learners), and raise conf-
dence levels. Guided math lessons and math workstations are scaffolded by the
teacher providing varying degrees of support until the students can do it on their
own. Different children require different types of scaffolding, and the length of
time needed for scaffolding skills also varies depending on the child and the
concept, skill, or strategy to be learned. While working with math workstations,
students reinforce and/or extend learning independently, with a partner, or in
small groups.
Let’s take a look at two classrooms that are differentiating. For example, Mrs.
Daniel’s second-grade classroom is working on activities differentiated by readi-
ness. Mrs. Daniel has created geometry workstations for her students. She gives
each group a different bag. Everyone is working on the big idea of composing and
decomposing shapes. With Bag A, students work on pattern block puzzles where
they can use the scaffolding of the outlines and the colors to help them compose
and decompose different shapes. With Bag B, students work on pattern block puz-
zles; however, these are at a more diffcult level, without the shapes outlined. With
Bag C, students make up their own puzzles. Let’s take a look at Mr. Luke’s class-
room. He has created some differentiated workstations by choice, tapping into
learning styles. He has created a menu for exploring shapes, and students choose
how they want to practice. He has a painting activity (visual), a book about shapes
(linguistic), a Play-Doh activity (kinesthetic), a shape game (interpersonal), and an
activity about fnding shapes around the room (naturalistic).
Key Points
• Beliefs About Teaching
• Zone of Proximal Development
• Multiple Learning Styles
• Multiple Intelligences
• Building Confdence
• Active Learning
• Constructivism and Math
• Differentiated Instruction
Summary
Our beliefs about teaching and learning should frame everything we do in our
classrooms, from how we set them up, to how we seat our students and have
them work together, to what our procedures and protocols are. We have to think
about what our classrooms show about what we believe about students being
able to work in their zone of proximal development, what we believe about stu-
dents having multiple intelligences that shape their learning, and what we do to

18 ◆ Beliefs That Frame Guided Math

build confdence in our students. When you look at our lessons, is there evidence
of active learning and students constructing their knowledge? Is differentiation
woven throughout the seams of the everydayness of your classroom?
Refection Questions
1. What are three of your core beliefs about teaching and learning?
2. Can you see your beliefs enacted in your classroom?
3. In your classroom, is differentiated instruction apparent?

Beliefs That Frame Guided Math ◆ 19

 3
Five Teacher Moves for
Small-Group Success

DOI: 10.4324/9780429283253-3 ◆ 21
 Teacher moves keep students moving forward.
(Wright & Hoonan, 2019, p. 6)

In a guided math group, we grow “stronger and smarter together” (Wright &
Hoonan, 2019). Teachers must guide students as they do the math, facilitating
conversations that build understanding. This is all part of a system of learn-
ing that includes one-to-one conferences, rich workstations, and whole-group
encounters that motivate students to learn. Doing great interactive, rigorous,
standards-based math helps motivate students to want to do math. When stu-
dents want to do math, they learn to do math. Papert (n.d.) tells us that students
thrive on “hard fun.”
In guided math groups, we are trying to foster a love of mathematics. We are
creating risk-taking spaces where students can discover and construct knowledge
by taking risks that teach. So in the group, teachers have to always ask themselves,
“Am I teaching math, or am I teaching my students to become mathematicians?”
There is a big difference. We can get at these questions deeper by thinking: Is the
focus on the problem? Is the focus on the student thinking, doing, and being? Is
the small group stuck in “telling mode” (Johnston, 2004) or “answering mode”
rather than “thinking mode”?
When you sit down at the table, what is in your “teaching bag”? Do you have a
repertoire of ways and means of teaching all of your students? Do you have fex-
ible thinking about what needs to happen in that group? Do you see the students
as doers, thinkers, and discussers of math? The goal of the guided math group is to
grow our students into powerful, productive, playful, fexible, confdent, thought-
ful mathematicians. In order to effectively teach small guided math groups, you
have to have a system in place to step back and ask yourself: What is working,
what’s not working, and for whom? Who’s getting it? What are they getting? Who
is not getting it? Why?
Depending on the purpose, a small-group lesson could look like other parts of
a balanced math component, like a strategy talk, a math aloud, or even a coaching
conference. When you are planning your group, you have to ask yourself: What
are you trying to do in this lesson? What are you trying to get the students to
know about math? How much support do the students need in this lesson? Based

Five Teacher Moves for Small-Group Success ◆ 23

on the answers to these questions, you will know what to do. Sometimes, you are
demonstrating a skill. Other times, you are facilitating a guided discovery lesson.
Sometimes, you are coaching as the students play a game. You will do different
things based on what students need. See, the guided math group is based on stu-
dent needs, not on a pacing calendar.
There are fve teacher moves that teachers make in guided math groups (see
Figure 3.1). Teachers use a variety of assessment methods so that they know as
much as they possibly can about their students. They use that data to build fex-
ible groups that are targeted, temporary, and dynamic. They plan continuously.
They understand that planning sets them up for success. Throughout the lesson
the teacher is purposefully scaffolding the activities. The teacher is also giving
immediate feedback in a way that moves the student forward.

Figure 3.1 Five Teacher Moves

Balanced Assessment is a way to watch, see, hear and know

what students are doing. It consists of kidwatching, interviews,
conferences, and paper and pencil assessments.

Flexible Grouping is a way to meet the differentiated needs of

students in an ongoing dynamic way. Flexible, data responsive
groups versus fxed groups will motivate, engage and
encourage students to do math.

Planning is key to success. Great groups happen way before the

group ever gets there. Teachers must plan for every aspect of
the lesson, so that when the unexpected happens, the teacher is
prepared.

Scaffolding instruction is about building bridges between

teaching and learning. We can teach all day long but if
students don’t learn anything we have wasted everyone’s time.
Scaffolding is fguring out how to connect content, skills and
students.

Immediate Feedback is crucial to teaching and learning. The

research resoundingly states that targeted, constructive feedback
is the linchpin of learning.

24 ◆ Five Teacher Moves for Small-Group Success

Balanced Assessment
We have to watch our students throughout the process of Math Workshop. We need
to know what they are doing in the whole group, how they are acting, what they are
saying, and what is their level of participation. We need to watch our students dur-
ing the student activity. How are they in guided math groups? What type of work
do they do in workstations? How do they communicate with each other? How do
they show their thinking? How do they act as mathematicians? We need to watch
our students during the share time. How do they monitor their work? How do they
refect on what they have done and are learning? How do they communicate about
their journey? Kidwatching is about teaching the whole child. In order to do this, it
is important to collect various data sets about who the child is, what their interests
are, and how they get along socially with others. Kidwatching is an ongoing system
of data collection that involves watching, noticing, noting, and recording what the
child is doing and then using this information to inform teaching and learning.

Role of Flexible Grouping

Guided math groups are organized according to different criteria (see Figure 3.2).
Sometimes the groups are based on readiness levels. For example, if you are working
on multiplication by two-digit numbers, but you have a group of students who have
no idea what it even means to multiply, sometimes you will pull this group of students
and work with them on the prior knowledge to the skill. Other times the groups are
heterogenous. For example, you might be working on creating tape/bar diagrams.
You could pull a variety of students and work on this model with all of them.

Figure 3.2 Flexible Grouping

Traditional Ability Math Grouping Flexible Grouping

Children are grouped and labeled Children are grouped according to specifc
according to general achievement levels needs based on the unit of study; there is a
focus on strategy levels
Children work on concepts based on Targeted interventions depend on the
their level; low-level students get low- specifc domain and standards; everybody
level work gets challenging work at various levels of
Bloom’s taxonomy
Teacher sets the learning goals and Teacher opens up a conversation and
purposes for math and predetermined children talk about the math they are
concepts based on the math data studying; they bring insights and make
connections to their everyday lives
Groups are static Groups are fuid
Different groups do different work Everybody works on the Big Idea
Children rarely work with children Children work in a variety of groupings
outside of their group
Instruction is teacher-centered; teacher Teacher coaches, facilitates conversation,
talks and students listen and then leads discussion; students are active in the
respond conversation
No writing is involved Students write and share their thinking

Five Teacher Moves for Small-Group Success ◆ 25

 Sometimes the groups are chosen by the students. For example, the teacher
writes down three or four different group topics and tells the students that they
can sign up for whichever group they feel they want or need to join. Students
choose what they want to learn more about. Other times the teacher brainstorms
with the students which groups they should form. The students come up with a
variety of group topics that interest them, and then they join that group.
There are a variety of reasons for pulling a small guided math group:
• To continue exploring a big idea from the whole-group time
• To practice a skill
• To review prerequisites
• To extend thinking about a concept
• To address misconceptions and error patterns
It is important to remember that groups are fexible and temporary. The goal is
to engage with those students around a particular instructional goal, with inten-
sive practice. Guided math groups are fexible, meaning that they change over
time. As the teacher notices that students achieve particular knowledge and skills,
they move the students around.
It is important to remember that these are not permanent groups. No student should
ever be in Group A all year long. There is a great deal of research that says we should
never group-track students. It is completely fne to pull students and work in their
zone of proximal development, build background knowledge, and work with stu-
dents on major gaps. However, all students should also be working on the grade-level
standards with the needed scaffolds. They are temporary, fexible, and targeted.
Students can be in different groups based on the content strand. For instance,
Carlos could be a great geometrical thinker and yet still be learning his basic
math facts, so he would be in a group needing more support for number facts but
perhaps in a group doing more complex tasks during the geometry unit. This is
why ongoing assessments are essential to the effective implementation of guided
math groups. Through ongoing assessments, including quizzes, questionnaires,
math running records, and anecdotal observations, teachers monitor and evaluate
student progress. Teachers also use math conferences, where students sit down
and discuss their progress and plan for future work, and math interviews, where
teachers give oral assessments on particular skills.
Beware of confusing small-group instruction with ability grouping. There is a
big difference. Avoid the pitfall of only sorting and putting students into fxed groups by
readiness level. Mintz points out that
a fast-paced student might have only a superfcial understanding of a con-
cept, while a slower-paced student might have greater facility with the same
concept and a greater ability to apply that knowledge or skill. In this case, the
faster-paced student might have a lot to learn from the slower-paced student.
(2016)
It is important to have a variety of temporary, fexible groups throughout the year.
It is perfectly reasonable to do some temporary homogeneous grouping, but this
should not be the only way that grouping is done. For example, all the students who
are struggling with counting to fve should get together at some point and work

26 ◆ Five Teacher Moves for Small-Group Success

on that. But those same students should also be learning in other heterogeneous
groups. Flexible grouping allows teachers to move students in and out of groups
often and in targeted ways based on students’ needs, choices, and interests. Teach-
ers have to fne-tune the ability to consider various types of data, decide on dif-
ferent types of groups based on that data and then teach and refect on how it is
working and be ready and willing to change the groups often. This makes small-
group instruction “powerful because we are not statically sorting by ability but by
dynamically growing student [mathematicians]” (Wright & Hoonan, 2019, p. 120).
Wright & Hoonan offer a framework of sprints and marathons as a way to think
about different groups (2019, p. 140). Sprint groups are quick groups that are pulled
together based on actionable data, and they last for a short amount of time. Mara-
thon groups are pulled together for a longer period of time. Sprint groups might
go through a three-meeting cycle of learning. They are used to reinforce, review,
reteach, or practice a concept, skill, or big idea. For example, a sprint group might
be pulled to teach doubles facts to students who are struggling. A marathon group
is pulled to build a deeper foundation of a big idea and enduring understanding.
For example, a marathon group might be pulled to explore the concept of multi-
plication. This might take four to six meetings.

Planning
Data-driven planning is essential to fexible grouping. We must know who goes
where, and when. Students move around based on the data. Not all groups are
planned. Some are spontaneous. Others are student selected. Some are teacher
selected. To coordinate all these groups takes a tremendous amount of planning,
and it pays off well.
Teachers should plan for what happens before the lesson, what happens dur-
ing the lesson, and what happens after the lesson. Teachers must plan what they
will do with both predicted and unpredicted student moves. Teachers must plan
possible questions and possible answers. Teachers must anticipate confusion and
misunderstanding so that they are ready to address these when and if they come
up. Planning is the key to making it all happen.

The Importance of Scaffolding

Scaffolding is a temporary framework to help students get from where they are to where
they need to be. Scaffolding provides the support needed while the work is in progress.
When the work is done, the scaffolding is taken down. Buehl (2005) maintains that

we use scaffolds frequently in real-life. We see scaffolds that are assembled

to facilitate erecting or repairing a building; we see scaffolds used by paint-
ers to reach areas inaccessible without them; we see scaffolds dangling from
high-rise offces that allow window washers to undertake a task unimaginable
without such a device. But when the job is completed, scaffolds are disman-
tled; they are temporary structures.

Scaffolding provides safety and risk-taking in both building buildings and build-
ing knowledge. In math, it gives students something to hold on to, something to
use to get from one place to another, something that provides a sense of security.

Five Teacher Moves for Small-Group Success ◆ 27

 The purpose of the guided math group is to help students through a cycle of
engagement where they can become independent mathematicians. The teacher
is leading them through this scaffolded cycle with a variety of activities. There
are demonstrations, guided inventions, discovery activities, practice sessions, and
independent work.
In the guided math group, there is a nice balance between direct instruction
and discovery learning. It is not either/or; it is both/and. Mayer (2004) points
out that “a mixture of guidance and exploration is needed.” Wilson noted that
“characterizing discovery and direct instruction as diametrically opposed . . . has
done a disservice to both approaches” (Wilson et al., 2010, cited in Fyfe, Rittle-
Johnson, & DeCaro, 2011). Researchers have noted that “outcomes were favora-
ble for enhanced discovery when compared with other forms of instruction. The
fndings suggest that unassisted discovery does not beneft learners, whereas
feedback, worked examples, scaffolding, and elicited explanations do” (Alferi,
Brooks, Aldrich, & Tenenbaum, 2011).

RESEARCH NOTE
The average student will be unable to recall
most of the factual content of a typical lecture
within 15 minutes after the end of class. In
contrast, interests, values, and cognitive skills
are all likely to last longer, as are concepts and
knowledge that students have acquired not by
passively reading or listening to lectures but
through their own mental efforts (Bok, 2006,
pp. 48–49).

In the guided math group, teachers should be working in the student’s zone
of proximal development. Vygotsky called this “the distance between fnding
the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving
and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving
under adult guidance or in collaboration with capable peers” (1978, p. 86). This
is about strengths-based teaching. We want to fnd out what students can do and
then teach to the next level. Knowing learning trajectories is a great help here
(Clements & Sarama, 2009/2014). Guided Math is not about determining all the
defcits that students have and then teaching to those defcits, but rather building
on students’ strengths.
In the guided math groups the teacher is scaffolding the work so that students
have supports. Scaffolding can be tricky because you do not want to over-scaffold
or under-scaffold. You want scaffolding to be just right. Dixon (2020) also talks
about not doing the “just-in-case” scaffolding either. She writes that “When you
provide scaffolding ‘just in case’ students need it rather than ‘just in time’—i.e.,
when students demonstrate the need—you are shortchanging the learning process

28 ◆ Five Teacher Moves for Small-Group Success

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
So we came to the cemetery, in at the gates, and along a street of
little marble houses, to a field where there were only wooden and
black iron crosses, and to a hole that was dug in the red wet earth.
There was a man waiting for us by the hole. He helped the
croquemort to take the box out of the hearse and put it in the hole.
Alice stood close, close to the edge, looking down into the grave.
The rest of us stood together behind her.
The croquemort gave her a little spade, and told her what to do with
it.
Then she stooped down and dug up a spadeful of earth and threw it
into the hole where they had put the box.
Each of us went in turn to give earth to earth, and then it was over.
Alice stood close, close to the edge of the hole, and looked and
looked down into it.
The croquemort said something to Alice, but she did not move. He
then spoke to the bigger brother, who shuffled up to Alice and
tugged at her sleeve.
But still she did not move.
The smaller brother began to cry.
Then the sister went to Alice and pulled at her other sleeve.
"Take her away," the croquemort said to me.
I said, "Dear, we must go."
Without looking at me, she said, "I—I stay here." She stood close,
close to the hole and looked at the little pine box, and said again,
quite quietly, "I stay here."
I said, "You cannot stay," stupidly, as if we were discussing any
ordinary coming or going.
Her little sister, pulling at her skirt, said, "Say then, ask thou the lady
to let thee go to supper at the cantine."
"The cantine is for those who have babies," Alice answered. Then
she looked at me for the first time, her great wild eyes, in her face
that was stained and streaked where the black from the wet crape
had run.

Gégène's Croix de Guerre, One Thursday

When Gégène went to the Invalides to receive his Croix de Guerre,
in the great Court of Honour, there was no one to go with him
except Madame Marthe and me.
Gégène belongs to nobody. He is an "enfant de l'Assistance
Publique." There is nobody nearer to him than the peasants he was
hired out to work for, somewhere down in Brittany.
I do not know whether or not they were kind to him, whether or not
they cared about his going off to war, or would take interest in the
honours he has won. We know nothing but what the Assistance
knows about him; and he himself can tell us nothing, for he cannot
speak at all. His wound was in the head; he has been trepanned
twice. He may live a long time, he is such a strong young boy, but
he will never be able to speak. His right side is stiffened, he cannot
use that hand, and the foot drags. Except for that, and not being
able to speak, he is quite well.
Nobody knows how much he understands of it all, or what he thinks
and feels. Sometimes he looks very sad. His boyish face, refined by
pain, haunts me when I am away from the hospital. But sometimes
he seems quite content, happy to be just well housed and fed and
petted by us. We do not know what will become of him when he can
no longer stay in the hospital.
Madame Marthe says, "What would you have? he is not the only
one."
But she is very kind to him, and when she has a half-day's leave she
often takes him out with her, for a little treat.
She and I hurried through the dressings this morning and had
everything done, our cylinders sent to the sterilization, the apparatus
in order, the ward quite neat, in time to go and have lunch, the three
of us together, in a big café of the Boulevards.
Gégène was too excited to eat, and so was little Madame Marthe, in
her cap of the "Ville de Paris" and her blue woollen shawl. She had
to leave it for me to cut up Gégène's chicken and pour his red wine
for him.
It rained; the crowd in the Place des Invalides stood under dripping
umbrellas.
In the Court of Honour the arcades were packed with wet people,
and out in the great central space there was no shelter but
umbrellas for the poor great splendid heroes like Gégène.
There they all stood together, those who could stand, in all the pride
and tragedy of their crutches and their bandages—one little blinded
officer with his head cocked sideways like a bird's. And those who
could not stand had chairs and benches; two or three were there on
stretchers.
There was a group of women in deep mourning,—some of them
with children—who had come to receive the decorations of their
dead husbands or sons.
There were the great men of the General Staff,—maybe the Minister
of War, maybe the President, maybe the Generalissimo himself—with
all their high officers around them, already arrived, near the
entrance, astir with preparation.
Out in the centre of the Court, grouped almost motionlessly, were
the men who waited to receive their honours.
We could see our Gégène, standing up very tall and straight among
them.
"Isn't he nice?" I said to Madame Marthe, "Isn't he nice?"
But Madame Marthe was crying—funny little tears, and her nose
very red. "Oh!" she said, "Oh, what will happen when that man with
the gold braid comes to Gégène? He will speak to Gégène, and
Gégène cannot answer! He will hold out his hand to Gégène, and
Gégène will not be able to take it!"
We clutched each other in panic, and then the music broke out into
all the splendour of the Marseillaise.

Empty Memories
Seventeen months after the day when he went out for the first time,
he was killed beside his mitrailleuse.
He had been home in the meanwhile twice on leave, and there had
been nothing changed. He had won many honours, and she
supposed the other woman had been proud of him. For herself she
had seen him very little and always pleasantly. She was glad now
that it had been only pleasantly.
But it was the day of that first August, the day of his first going, that
one day, that one hour, she kept living again and again through. It
kept being present with her, curiously.
He had arrived—he had telegraphed—about four of the afternoon,
she did not know from where. He would have to leave again before
five o'clock. She knew, of course, with whom he had been. She
thought, waiting for him, what an irony that it should be like this,
after all the bitterness, he was coming back to her, and to the old
house of his people, in the street of many gardens.
She thought it would be awkward for them both. What could they
say to one another?
She wondered if it had been terrible to him to leave the other
woman. Probably the other woman was beautiful. All those women
were beautiful. She thought, perhaps that other woman loved him
and cared what happened to him.
Her two little boys were playing in the room.
The great closed rooms, to which she had brought them back
hurriedly from the seaside, fascinated them.
The bigger little one, in his sailor suit with the huge collar was
saying, "That's the old witch's cave, Toto, in the snow mountain."
The smaller one, with the curls and the Russian blouse, said, "Oh,
Zizi!"
"Yes; and, Toto, that big lump is the giant, sleeping."
"Oh, Zizi!"
Then their father came.
The little boys hung back and stared at him; they never had known
him really well.
Their mother stood up and went to meet him, across the wide room.
"You've had a horrid journey," she said.
"I've been fifty hours in the train," he answered. "Hallo, small boys,
there!"
"Toto," said Zizi, "he's going to be a soldier!"
"Oh, Zizi!" said Toto.
The bigger boy came over to his father. "I know a chap," he said,
"it's the son of a friend of mademoiselle's, whose father is dead and
cannot be a soldier."
"Poor chap," said his father.
His wife said, "Old Denis has got your things together. All the other
men-servants are gone. He has put you something to eat on the
dining-room table."
He said, "Will you come with me, do you mind? I've things to say to
you, and there is so little time."
But when they sat together at one corner of the big shining table, he
did not seem to know what to say. He tried to eat, but it seemed as
if he could not eat. He pushed the plate away and leaned his elbows
on the table and his head in his hands.
She thought she would like to do something for him, but did not
know what to do. Again she said, "It must have been dreadful in the
train."
"It was wonderful," he said. Then, sitting still with his face hidden,
he went on: "We were singing all the time. Wherever the train
stopped people gave us flowers; the whole train was full of flowers,
you know. They were most of them boys of the young classes in the
train. We sang the most absurd things—nursery rhymes, and old
cannons, 'Frères Jacques' and 'Cœur de Lise,' and those, you know.
What is the one about 'Papa Lapin'? None of us could remember the
one about 'Papa Lapin,' you know."
"I don't know," she replied. It had always annoyed her, his trick of
saying, "You know." She sat playing with something on the table.
He said again, "The whole train was full of flowers. 'Papa Lapin,'
'Papa Lapin'—how irritating, you know, when one can't remember."
He sat up suddenly erect, and said, "You'll take the boys and go
down to the old place and look after things. It has always bored you,
but after all it is for Zizi. And be good to my mother, will you, though
you don't like her—she, she remembers '70. And I've not been of
much use to her. I've not been of much use to you, nor to any one."
He stopped short.
It was odd that suddenly she, who never had thought much about
him, or felt things at all about him, should have known this thing.
She had known as she sat there with him, alone in the dining-room,
by the untouched things on the table, that he never would come
back. He was one of those who never come back.

Hospital
Often I am sad because I cannot worry enough about the 11,
Charles. I forget him even when I am in the ward. His is the bed I
see first when I look through the holes of the paint in the glass-
topped door, opposite, away at the far end of the ward. There he
has been, always, every day, through all the endless months since
the Marne, propped up against a table board and two pillows and a
sheet of black rubber. He breathes always more and more painfully,
and coughs always more and more. The fever lines on his chart
zigzag up and down, in long dreadful points. He has become very
cross and exacting. He scolds us in little feeble gasps, with little
feeble gestures. He is twenty-one years old, and has very long
eyelashes.
Yesterday when I went to say good-bye to him at the end of the day
he was crying there in his corner, quietly, all by himself. His long
eyelashes were all wet. I said, "Oh, little Charles, oh, little Charles!"
and kept saying it over and over, and had nothing else in all the
world to say. I patted his hands, that always lie both of them
together upon the strap which is fastened round the bar at the foot
of the bed, by which he is sometimes able to pull himself up.
His hands are white and thin and crooked, like the roots of things
that belong in the earth; while I patted his hands I was thinking that
they did not seem to belong in the light and air at all.
This morning I thought, "How absurd to have brought him a little
pot of cream!" A little pot of cream for a man who is dying.

Hautiquet
Hautiquet has gone back to the front. He would not let them tell me
he was going. I never saw him to say good-bye. Last night, I said,
as usual, "Bon soir, tout le monde, au revoir à demain!" And
Hautiquet said with the rest, "A demain, Madame." He left a little
package to be given to me after he was gone.
He was one of the older ones. He had been ill in the first winter with
rheumatism and pleurisy. He went back and fought all summer, and
all through the Champagne, and till Christmas. Then he got
rheumatism again, this time in his eyes. He has been nearly blind
since then, here in the hospital.
He was a clumsy peasant who never talked much. And of what he
did say I could only understand about half. I did not know that he
thought about me at all.
But in the little package he left for me there was an aluminum heart,
made out of the aluminum from a shell. Madame Marthe says he
had been nearly all the time working at it, because he had clumsy
hands and could scarcely see. He had had much trouble getting the
shape right. He had cut my initials on one side of it and his on the
other, crookedly, because he was so nearly blind.

Jean Fernand
He had curly yellow hair and big blue eyes. He got well terribly fast.
I was wishing all the time that he would take longer about it. He was
so young.
His eyes were so blue, and round, and had seen all the horrors of
the great retreat. The look of those things had stayed in his round
young blue eyes.
He told me he was afraid of going back, but that he was glad to go
because "tous les copains sont là." He said he couldn't bear to think
of them there, when he was safe out of it. "It is as if they were
fighting for me," he said, "and being wounded for me, and dying."
I don't know why I write of him in the past tense, for I have always
the most amusing letters from him, from there. He is near Verdun.
This morning I got from him a little snapshot a copain had made of
him, down on all-fours in the bottom of his trench feeding a baby pig
out of a bottle.

Wednesday, February 9th

Post Card
Boinet is very happy to-day. He has news of his people at last. Since
he left them in the first days, all through these months and months,
it has been as if they had been simply swept away out of the world.
Everything that Boinet loved was swept away by the great black
wave of the war. Into what depth of the end of all things all his life
has been swept away! He has been imagining and imagining. He
says, all the time in the trenches he was tortured by imagining
things that might have happened to his three little sisters. Boinet is
twenty-two, and the three sisters were younger than he, and
beautiful, he says. Odd, how one speaks always in the past tense of
people whom the war has taken into its dark spaces. Boinet tells
how he loved his mother, as if it were a thing of another life.
And here is his post card saying that they are all quite well, and
signed by every one of them.
For nearly a year Boinet has been in the hospital, Number 16. He
has troubled about his horrible burns scarcely at all, but we have
thought he would go mad torturing himself with imagining things
that might have happened to his people.
By means of an agency here, and the Mairie at Tourcoing, it was
possible, at last, for his people to send him a post card of six lines.
It came this morning; I have had to read it to him about fifty times
over.
It says that they are all very well, and for him to give news of Pierre,
the husband of his sister Josette, and it is signed with all their dear,
dear names, Père, Mère, Josette, Marie, Cloton.
Only it was sad, for Boinet knows that the husband of poor little
Josette, married that last July was killed long ago in one of the first
battles of the war.

The New 25
He is of Morocco, brown and very lonely, and always shivering with
cold. He speaks scarcely any French. His great dark eyes look to one
with all the sadness of the eyes of animals that are dumb. Nobody
understands him. He smiles up at us, with his beautiful white teeth
and his big dumb eyes, and does not understand what we are
saying. He makes me little magic-lanterns out of orange rinds, and
tells me long stories about them, of which I understand not a word.
Once when I went back, just for an afternoon's visit to the hospital,
I was wearing a bright blue silk scarf, and he took it and held it and
cried over it, and would not give it back to me. I cannot imagine of
what it reminded him, why he cried, or why he loved it.
He has three tiny little wooden dolls, scarcely bigger than almonds
and wonderfully carved, that he never will let us touch. Madame
Marthe thinks that they are strange gods of his; but I think they
represent three children, far away, in lands where skies are blue, like
my scarf.
He is only slightly wounded; very soon he will have to unwrap
himself from my big white woollen shawl, and go away again to
battles.
And I suppose I shall never know anything more about him.

Marketing
He was standing half turned away from the others, the fat old
woman in the woollen knitted shawl and a girl with a pretty brown
bare head. He was holding a big market basket very carefully in both
hands. I thought there was something odd about the careful way he
held it and the way he stood, his head turned to one side and
hanging a bit.
The old woman and the girl were talking very much about the
cabbages, with the woman of the push-cart, also old and also
wearing a knitted woollen shawl.
In the stir and noise of the street market the way the tall broad
young soldier stood so still and silent did seem odd. And he was
holding the basket with such very great care.
There was a live white goose in the basket. It kept stretching its
long neck up over the rim of the basket and peering about, opening
and shutting its yellow bill and hissing at people.
When the old woman and the girl had finished their discussion and
selected their cabbage, they pushed the cabbage into the market
basket along with the goose, and all the time the soldier held the
basket carefully.
Then the old woman put her arm through one of his arms, and the
girl put her arm through the other. As he turned to go where they
would take him, I saw that he was blind; the wound had healed, but
it was as if his eyes were closed. He very carefully let go the basket
with one hand, and with the other hand, the girl's rather impatient
touch on his elbow, he made a salute to where he thought the
woman of the push-cart was standing, and then the old woman and
the girl led him away with the basket.

Hospital
The wards of "our" floor get always all the light there is. When there
is sunlight it all comes in and picks the dust motes up and sets them
dancing, down steep slants and ladders. When there is wind it sobs
and sings along the wards and corridors. The rain makes wide
sweeps of the great windows, and mists press very close against
them and get into the wards and drift there. When there was snow,
in these few days the rooms were all full of its whiteness. Almost it
was as if its silence were there, and its peace.

Saturday, March 5th

The night was full of great bells booming, Verdun, Verdun, Verdun.
And yet there were no bells.
I never saw a darker morning come to Paris. The darkness came into
the room, thick and wet and cold.
I had my breakfast by firelight.
The crows are back already in the garden; the bare black treetops
were full of them this dark morning, and not one of them stirred or
made a sound.
The lamps of the trams were lighted, and the lamps of the streets
and quays and bridges.
The river is very high, the trees of the margins stand drowning.
The snow of these last days has stayed on in places, as yellow as
fog and smoke.
In the old great beautiful courtyards of the hospital the snow is quite
deep, on the roofs and ledges of red brick and grey stone, and on
the huge square old cobbles, and on the black tracery of trees and
bushes and of the vines along the walls.
The buds, that were soft and green last week, are black now; I was
afraid to go and touch them and find them frozen hard.
The blackbird was singing. He has been back for nine days. It was
dreadful in the dark and cold to hear him singing. How terrible all
lovely things are become!

Same day
In the half dark I came home along the canal. In these nights,
coming home from the hospital, I have learned always more and
more that the canal is beautiful, curving down between its old poor
black tumbling houses, under its black bridges.
To-night the few lights of the quays and of windows fell into the
water of the canal, just odds and ends of gold.
I stopped and stood and looked.
It had been a bad day in my ward.
I thought, how beautiful ugly things are become!

Saturday night before Easter

The cool wet fresh smells of the garden, and of all the gardens of
the quarter, come in at my wide window. It is almost midnight, the
rain has stopped, and it is not cold any more. Sometimes the crows
talk together from the top of the trees where their nests are, above
the old low roofs my window looks across. There has been for days
now, in all the rain and cold, a drift of green about the trees, the
fine green mesh of a veil that seems to float, it is so bright and frail,
about the black wintry tree-trunks and boughs and branches. The
blackbirds came back last week to the garden.
But it is only to-night that one can believe in spring.
In the wet sky, over the roofs and chimneys, and the treetops, there
are some stars that hang as big and near as lamps. At dawn perhaps
the nightingale will be singing.

Easter Day
It is wonderful that spring should come on Easter Day.
One waked—and lo, winter was over and passed. There was a
moment, in waking, of not being able to believe at all in
unhappiness.
The nightingale was singing, the sun was coming up out of the filmy
leaves of the garden, the bells of all the churches were pouring out
Easter.
The river was misty in the early morning, under the sunshine, mauve
and opal and blue. The trees of the quays, in their fragile leaf,
seemed to drift in the mist and sunshine. I could not tell if the trees
were gold or green in the Tuileries gardens. They were quite golden
against the long purple mass of the Louvre, and quite golden up the
river, where there is an especially bright blur of them under the
purple towers and gable of Notre Dame.
The Halles were full of country and spring.
My own poor ugly canal had colours and lines of spring about it; its
dingy, dark old houses were lifted into a sky so lovely that they
seemed to have become quite lovely too, and its water, under the
poor bridges, was full of gold and blue and purple and deep shining.
All the birds were singing in the great courtyards of the hospital, and
all the opening buds sang too, and the green, green grass in its
close bindings of stone.
Cordier—his face again bandaged, for he has been worse of late—
tried to tell me something. I could make out, Nouveaux, Verdun,
chez vous, très grands blessés," and then there was to open the
door upon the ward's new tragedies and glories.

Frogs
She, his mother, wished he wouldn't be so sweet. It was what she
had longed for since he was a little boy, an indifferent, cold little
child, and dreamed of. It made it difficult for her not to break down.
And how dreary that would be for him, who was so glad to come
home.
Always he had been very bored at home. He never since he was at
all grown-up—he was twenty-one—had stayed an hour more than
was necessary in the old dark sad castle. Now he had six days, just
six days, for his own, to do with whatever he chose, away from
those places of death, and it seemed that there was nothing he
wanted but the old dull things that always before had so bored him.
She had been coming up from the village in the soft wet April
afternoon, by the wide central avenue of the parterres between the
little clipped yew trees, when he came out to the terrace. She had
an instant's sick terror of thinking he was killed, and that this was
her vision of him. But he was calling to her, and laughing. She had
stopped, and stood quite still, and he had come eagerly, running
down the steps to her.
They had six days together.
Often she had thought of the old strong castle that it was a place
meant for great things to happen in, glories and disasters. Small
things were of no matter in it. There had been no room bright and
light enough for a little child to be gay in. Her baby's room had had
stone walls and a high carved ceiling and windows four feet deep. If
ever he had laughed and shouted, his little voice had been lost
among old echoes. How could any child not have been afraid of the
shadows that trailed and lurked along the corridors and upon the
stairs.
She specially remembered her little son standing with Miss on the
top of the terrace steps, under the great Watch Tower, never running
to meet her as she came up through the garden, the shadow of the
stern old house prisoning him, like some dark spell, in his little white
sailor dress.
Now, he had come to meet her eagerly, as she had so used to wish
he would.
In the six days he was all the things to her that she had ever
dreamed of. He was her little boy who needed her. He had wild gay
moments, when his gaiety swept her along, and moments that
needed her comforting.
Then it was their last day together, a softly raining day.
In the morning they went for a long tramp through their own woods
and on into the forest, deeper and deeper. All the forest ways were
full of wet blue hyacinths and songs of thrushes. The little rain made
music in the April branches, and the wet smells were as incense in
the forest aisles. When they came home he was hungry. Nothing
would do but that they should go down to the village to the Place de
l'Eglise and get spice bread and barley sugar from old Madame
Champenot, as he had used to do when he was a small boy to
whom his mother gave five sous for being good.
They must go down the terrace steps and along the avenue to the
Queen's Bosquet, where the old statues stood together dressed in
ivy, and through the little stern gate in the rampart walls, and across
the moat by the new bridge, that was so old, to the Place of the
church.
Thatched roofs and tiled roofs were touched with spring wherever
moss and lichen clung to them, green and grey and yellow.
He had gone into the little shop, and she had waited outside, not
able to talk to any one.
The great Watch Tower of the castle, and the low square grey tower
of the church, and all the crooked old tall black chimney-pots
seemed to swim in the blue of the sky.
Waiting there she felt that the coming of spring was sad almost past
bearing. She thought, soon the frogs in the castle moats would be
singing their lonesome song.
Afterwards they went round to the stables, from which all the horses
were gone, and he was sad to think how long he had forgotten his
little old pony, scarcely bigger than a dog.
In the afternoon he must go everywhere about the house, to all the
old rooms and corridors and stairways, that he never before had
known he loved. She must go with him, through the great dim attics,
and up the tower stairs, and out on to the battlements, to the
sunset; down into the great stone-vaulted kitchens, and the cellars
that had been dungeons. They went laughingly at first. But
afterwards they did not laugh any more. It had come to have the
sacredness of a pilgrimage, their small journeying.
He talked quite gaily while they were at dinner in the long dining-hall
under the minstrel's gallery.
But when they went to her little study afterwards together, they both
were very silent.
There was a fire burning, but all the windows were open.
And as they sat there, almost silently together, they heard the first
frogs singing in the castle moat. He laughed, and would have her tell
him the story of the Frog Princess, that he never had cared for her
to tell him when he was a little boy.
She knew that she would never listen to the frogs again without
remembering that night.
She wondered if the memory would become an agony to her. It
seemed to her strange that, caring so much, she could not know.

Thursday, April 27th

Under the walls of St. Germain des Prés, and the chestnut trees in
their spring misty leaf of amber and topaz and ruby, a vendor of, I
don't know what, had set up a little booth and shaded it with an
indigo blue bit of canvas. The shade was deep purple under the blue
canvas, and brass and bronze and copper and rust-red things had
vague shapes in the shadow.
It was so beautiful that I was happy for all of a minute, passing in
the tram on my way to the cantine.

The Boy with Almond Eyes

They tell me that when they suffer I make little growling noises in
my throat. They laugh and say, "Now the little Madame is angry!"
I am angry, I am furious. I am furious against suffering. I hate
suffering.
If they scream I do not mind so much, but when they suffer silently,
it is terrible.
Once the ward doctor thought I was going to cry.
I was holding the stump of a boy's leg while they dressed it. The leg
had been cut off at the Front, hurriedly, anyhow, and the nerves left
exposed.
The boy shuddered and quivered all over, and would not make a
sound, and grew rigid with pain, stiff, and quite cold, and never
made a sound.
The doctor, with the probe in his rubber-gloved hands, looked at me,
and said, "You are going to cry! You must not cry before the
wounded, it unnerves them."
And then I heard myself growling, with dreadful big words of the
patronne's smothered under the growls.
And the little boy laughed out, through everything, just like a
mischievous bad little boy.

Monday, May 1st

To-day is so beautiful, many people must have been happy for a
moment just in waking. It is so difficult not to be happy. It is such a
wonderful thing to open one's blinds to a sunshiny May morning.
And then there has to be the next moment.

May 3rd
In other years also the spring was sad. There was always that
exquisite lovely poignant sadness of spring.
These days are too beautiful. It seems as if one could not bear
them.
I think it is because so much beauty makes one want happiness.
One cannot understand, in such loveliness, why one is not happy.
Something is asked of us that we cannot answer.
I remember Roselyne's saying, long before there was war, one
sunset, down by the sea in the south—
"So much happiness would be needed to fill the beauty of the day."

May 4th
Yet perhaps in this cruel year spring is less cruel. Not to be happy is,
in this year, the inevitable thing. One is less lonely in each his own
special lack of happiness. And each one may think he would be
happy, perfectly, if only there were no war.

Hospital, Friday, May 5th

They have taken away all my little soldiers. I did not know at all. I
came just as usual, and did not notice any unusual confusion. I
heard much noise as I ran up the stairs, but there is always noise in
the corridors.
When I got to the top of the stairs, there was the last batch of them,
in their patched faded old uniforms, with their crutches and
bandages and their bundles, all packed into the lift that was just
started down. I could not even see who they were.
Some one called "Madame, oh, Madame!"
I think it was Barbet, the little 4.
I turned to run down the stairs to catch them up at the bottom, as
they would get out of the lift, but Madame Marthe came out of the
patronne's room, with a huge jar, of I don't know what, in her arms,
and called to me, "Quick, the new ones will be arriving. Fetch our
sheets from Madame Bayle!"
Twenty-six beds and ten stretcher beds all left empty.
Every one is gone, except little Charles who is dying, and 14, whose
arm has just been amputated. I don't know where they are gone.
Some to the Maison Blanche and some to St. Maurice, some to their
dépôts, some to country hospitals. The patronne has had no time to
tell me where they are gone. When she has time she will have
forgotten, and cannot trouble to look up the lists of them. Madame
Marthe does not know. She does not care. She is used to it.
But I—I am not used to it. I have loved them. I had nursed them so
long, and done so many odds and ends of things for them, silly
things and tragic things. I had helped them to get well. Really and
truly I had helped them to get well. I had been so happy to have
helped them. And now I do not know what has become of them.

Hospital—Arrival, Saturday, 6th

They are very tired. They want to be let alone. They do not care
what happens to them, or to the little queer odds and ends of things
in their bundles.
They were bathed in the admission room; Madame Marthe and
Madame Alice were called there. Madame Madeline threw out their
dirty torn clothes, and the boots of those who had boots, to Madame
Bayle in the hall.
Madame Bayle made Joseph take all that away, and gave me each
man's own little things to put on the night table of his bed, his képi
and his béret, if it were not lost, a pipe, a tobacco pouch, perhaps a
big nickel watch, some letters, the photograph of a girl or an old
woman, a purse with a few sous in it. Several of them have medals,
the Croix de Guerre and the military medal, and one had a chaplet
that I had to hide under the photograph of an old woman in her best
bonnet. "Number 9," says Madame Bayle, "Number 16, Number 8,"
and dumps the poor little handfuls of things into my apron.
"All your things are here," I say to the men, "look, Monsieur 8, I
have put them so on the table. I will move the table to the other
side because of your arm. Little Alpin, here is your béret hung on the
knob at the top of the bed, waiting for you to go out into Paris. And
you, my little one, here are your two medals, I pin them to the edge
of your chart. How proud you must be!"
But he does not care at all. He is a little young child, of the class 16.
He has a round, boy face and big, round, blue eyes like a child's. He
only wants to lie with his eyes shut. He is the number 3. His right leg
is amputated, and his left foot is in plaster.
They are all men from Verdun, wounded eight or fifteen days ago,
who have been moved from one to another hospital of the Front.
They do not want to talk about it. They want to just lie still with their
eyes closed—except the one who screams, the 24.
The 24 screams and screams. He also has had a leg amputated. He
is perhaps twenty years old. He is a big blonde boy. He clutches the
bars of the top of the bed with his two hands, and drags all his rigid
weight upon his hands, and screams, with wide-open eyes that stare
and stare.
Also the man wounded in the head, the Number 6, lies with his eyes
wide staring open and like glass. He has a colonial medal that I do
not know, and the Croix de Guerre. They do not yet know if he can
speak or not. Madame Marthe told me while she was washing her
hands at the chariot that he may live quite long.
She said, "The chief is coming to see the wounds, we must cut all
the dressings. Take your scissors, and begin to the right of the door."

The Chéchia, Monday, May 15th

I suppose because to-day the sunshine is happy, Charles, the little
11, who has been in his bed in the corner since the days of the
Marne, has taken a fancy to have all his things got ready for him in
case he wants to go out. He says that any day now he may be
wanting to go out.
He is of the ler Zouaves, and it is a red cap he must have, a chéchia.
Nobody knows what became of his, it is so long since he had worn
it. He never thought of it himself until to-day. But to-day he thinks of
nothing else.
Number 10 and Number 12—new these last days—say he waked
them up talking about it. When Madame Marthe came on at six
o'clock he beckoned to her at the door, and when she came, he
whispered—did she think he might ask the American for it?
He was very red when he asked me, and then very white, and his
hands clasped and unclasped.
Did I think I could have it to-morrow? Did I think I could have it this
afternoon? And did I think that possibly, possibly I could get a tassel
for it: a big lavender tassel that would hang down all at one side.

Monday, May 29th

I went this afternoon to the Pré Catelan, for the first time in very
long. I went in by the gate near the stone column.
There were quite a lot of motors waiting at the gate; it did not look
war as it did last year. Last year, in May, the gates were always
almost shut, and when people came they had to push through. Last
year the little park was very empty. We used to wander as we
pleased across the lawns and gather primroses that grew for
nobody. But now there were people in the paths; especially Nounou
with her broad ribbons and her campstool, and the baby, and
Monsieur l'Abbé, playing blind man's buff with the bigger children.
Green lawns, bright as live green fire, the trees all in delicate misty
leaf, light greens and dark greens and copper and amber and gold,
filmy and drifting, as veils, about the trunks and boughs and
branches.
The flower-beds were full of hyacinths and forget-me-nots.
Never, never, surely has spring meant so much as in these two years
of war.
All the birds of spring were singing. All of them. The grass of the
lawns was full of little starry pink and white daisies.
By the little watercourse there was a bank of blue flowers. They
were reflected in the water, very, very blue. I do not know what they
were. They were of a much more intense blue than the myosotis. I
did not go to see what they were; I thought they might be the blue
flowers of happiness, and that it was better I did not go too near.
The hideous, huge restaurant is a hospital. The paths and the road
to it, and the lawns and garden beds about it are corded off that
people may not go and look. From the distance, you see vague,
white shapes of things, and figures all in white, moving about inside
the great plateglass windows!
What wonderful people used to sit at the tables, in those windows!
What is there now on the raised platform of the music? The music
used to be so gay. Did people ever really dance there?
How queer pain and grief seem to be, in this place that they have
taken over. Was this really ever a place so gay and brilliant, that no
other place of the world symbolized quite as fragile a thing?

Thursday, June 1st

Verdun, Verdun, Verdun. The great bells, that are not really bells,
are still ringing and ringing. One hears them ringing through the
streets of Paris, up and down, all night long. Out in the country they
must be ringing, and ringing across all the fields and forests, and
through the hills, and along all the roads and rivers, and to all the
edges of the land.
Even if they were dirges, tolling, they would yet always have been
triumphant bells.

The Queen: To her

A beautiful thing has happened in a beautiful hospital. Going to that
hospital from mine, what seems most beautiful about it, and very
strange, is its peace. It is so quiet. The little gentle nuns move softly
and have sweet low voices. The women who work there are all of
them women who choose to serve, and they serve lovingly. One
feels there quietness and sympathy, and something that I think must
be just the love of God. My hospital seems like a nightmare in that
beautiful place.
One day there came to visit that beautiful hospital a very gentle lady,
than whose story there is none more tragic in the whole world.
She is a queen who lives in exile. She has known every sorrow that a
woman can know, and that a queen can know, every one. And she
lives, with the memory of her sorrows, in exile.
She may come to France at times for visits of which few people are
aware; and those are the times that are most nearly happy for her,
for she loves France, and the France that knows her, that is so truly
her own, loves her greatly.
The little soldiers of France might have been her soldiers. If they
realized, how they would love to be her soldiers! What would it not
mean to them to have such a queen to fight for?
The soldiers in the beautiful hospital were not told at first that it was
a queen who came that day to see them. They only knew that it was
a very lovely lady. She understood just how to talk to them, just how
to look at them. They were men who had given everything they had
to give for the country that she loved, that was indeed her country,
and she loved them, every one of them, and her love for them was
in her eyes and on her lips and in her voice. She had known so
much of suffering that she could take the suffering of each man for
her own to bear with him.
There was a man who was dying. He was not a beautiful young boy,
but one of those older little soldiers who touch one's heart so. The
thin, worn, stooping little soldier type who has his wife and the
children and the old people to be anxious about while he serves his
France. The bearded, anxious-eyed little soldier type who knows just
what it all means, and who has the flame of the spirit of France
shining in his always rather haggard eyes.
This little soldier was dying; there was no hope at all. He knew quite
well. His wife and babies were far away and could not come to him.
And he was glad of that, he wanted his wife to be spared all she
might be spared of pain. He was glad she would not have to
remember his suffering so. The nurse had promised to tell his wife
always that he had not suffered at all. His nurse had promised him
that she would always keep sight of his wife and the babies, and be
sure that no harm came to the old people. She had comforted him in
everything. And she, and the good little sisters, had so beautiful a
faith in God, that he was sure they knew, and that it all would be
quite well.
He had won his Croix de Guerre and Médaille Militaire; they had
been sent, but the officer had not yet come from the President of
the Republic to give them to him. It seemed very sad to the people
of the hospital that his medals should not be given to him before he
died. His nurse had been very troubled about it, and the chief doctor
also. They had sent messages twice to the authorities, but no one
had come.
Then, when the queen was there the nurse who herself was a great
lady of the world, thought of a beautiful thing and asked the chief
doctor if it could not be. That the queen should give his decorations
to the man who was dying, and that they should tell him, and all the
others, that it was the queen. She knew what pleasure it would give
him. She knew it would be like a dream to him, a lovely dream thing
to happen to him, just at the end. Of course, it would not be official,
but what did that signify—now? The man was dying.
The doctor and the queen spoke together for a minute.
The queen had never cried for her own sorrows, but she had tears in
her eyes then, and did not mind that every one saw.
When all of those people of the hospital who could come were
assembled in the ward, the hospital staff, and all of the wounded
who could walk or be carried, the doctor told them, very simply, his
voice a little hoarse, that it was the Queen of —— who was there
among them, and that she was going to give his decorations to their
comrade. A thrill passed through all the ward as the doctor's voice
dropped into silence. No one spoke at all.
The little soldier who was to be so honoured turned his head and
looked at the queen.
She was crying very much, but she smiled, and said to him, "You
see, my little one, I cry because it is so great an honour for me that
I may give his decorations to a soldier of France." She would not
have him know that she cried because he was dying. She smiled
down at him.
Then she took his papers from the doctor and read his citations out
aloud, quite steadily, to all the ward.
She bent down over him and pinned the two medals on his poor
nightshirt. "The honour is all mine," she said.
And then she took his head between her hands, as if he had been a
child—as if he had been her own son who was so cruelly dead—and
kissed his forehead.
They say that royalty must go away out of the world. But how can
any one say that who knows beautiful things? There is something so
beautiful that belongs only to kingship, something of ideal and
dream. It was there, in the hospital ward, when the great lady in the
plain, almost poor, dress, her eyes full of tears, was honoured by the
honour she might do a little soldier. Only a queen could have made it
all seem so beautiful. Only a queen could have kissed a little soldier
of the people, who really were her people, so quite as if he had been
her child, or have made of kneeling by his bed for a minute quite so
simple and proud and symbolic a thing.
The little soldier never said one word. His eyes followed her with the
worship that is quite different from any other worship, the worship