My son did third grade math while everyone else did second. Teach put five review problems on the smart board. Students worked individually or in pairs while she took five minutes to teach my son his lesson. She taught the class while he did his work. Also the textbook had a computer component to it so he did that too. And the textbook had an extend the lesson challenging workbook page he would do (all on third grade level). If she was circulating helping all the other kids he could ask for clarification if he needed it but he didn’t interrupt the other kids during their instruction.
Funny though third grade teacher couldn’t do the same for fourth grade math. We did something different that year....whole grade skip.
My elementary school there were usually two different reading groups and two different math if needed. Usually it was about 3 kids who needed something different for math. Sometimes they just went up a grade that period for math, sometimes the teacher had two groups. It isn’t rocket science. Get one group going on review or challenging problem, teach other group, go back to first group teach them, circulate. But back in the 70s we weren’t group phobic.
