ABSTRACT
About a year ago, I was conducting a math interview with a first-grade boy named Miguel. We were going through the list of interview problems and question types and he was getting all the answers right. Finally, out of exasperation, he looked up at me and said, “Give me some hard ones!” I laughed, chucked the sheet, and started to make up harder problems. He was clearly bored with the current line of questioning. This happens so often in our classrooms. According to Lillian Katz (2000, p. 39), “when a teacher tries to teach something to the entire class at the same time, chances are, one-third of the kids already know it; one-third will get it; and the remaining third won’t. So two-thirds of the children are wasting their time.” Miguel seconds her point. It is very important for teachers to work with small guided math groups at all levels, not just the lowest-performing. All students need the teacher’s attention at some point to push them to the next skill level. Classroom assistants are a great help, but they should not be the only people who work with a particular group. By the end of every week, the teacher should have connected with every student in some form or another, possibly through small-group work, conferencing, or math interviews.
