Welcome to Part 3 of how I run my math block-click on over if you missed part 1 or part 2.
This post is going to be all about how I introduced the students to the tasks.
I started by introducing their Math Journals.
We talked about how sometimes they would do an entry with me, and sometimes they would be doing an entry on their own.
(Our first entry was Math About Me-which is always good for the first few days of school!).
To get them used to what the journal entries would look like on their own, I created a little prompt slip!
I helped scaffold how I wanted them to answer by giving them sentence stems to use. (This mirrors how I taught them to respond to reading-what's good for the goose is good for the gander!)
Then, I let them loose!
I walked around, helping focus kids, and having them elaborate on their ideas, but with the sentence stem help, most of them were able to do it on their own!
Of course, some of their answers were funny!
I also wanted to introduce them to task cards- something that we use a lot of in my room!
I spread them around the room, and had the kids wander around with a clip board to answer the questions.
While 'writing the room' isn't how we normally do task cards, it was a good way to introduce what they were, and get the kids used to working off them. It also had them get out and about, and for some of my wiggly friends, it was perfect!
I didn't introduce them to their workbooks-I figured they could handle those :)
Each activity took a math period (the journal entry took a little less), but the time I took helped introduce the kids to some of the things that we'll be doing during our math block, and left me free to observe them the first few day.
I'd like to think that it also help set the tone-that math can be fun, and there are going to be lots of different ways to practice and show our work!
Welcome to part 2 of how I run my math block! Part 1 is all about why I needed the change, and some things I did about it :)
For my daily math block, I start off each and every day with my calendar. We do calendar during snack time, but kids are expected to pay attention and participate.
You so totally need this calendar if you have a SMART Board-it's amazing. She also has it bundled for the year, and one for the lower grades as well (which our 3rd grade team has after seeing me use mine during walkthroughs!)
Starting off with calendar, we do the number of the day by finding the factors, deciding what type of number it is, and then I have the kids come up with 3-5 ways to get that number as an answer and we share out (which I love hearing about, they try and make them complicated, and I often remind them that simple ones work just as well. It's naturally differentiated to them, and they can make it as hard or as easy as they need!:)
We record all of this in our Numbers Notebook, and then work our way through the rest of the calendar, and the daily component as well.
Next, I do (or try to!) the lesson of the day. I stick to the Math in Focus structure for this, but I try to keep it short, so I have more time to meet with students, and they have more time to practice.
Sometimes, it'll be a longer lesson because of manipulatives, but I try to keep the main lesson under 20 minutes (less if possible!), so they have at least 30 minutes of practice time.
After I finish the lesson, I put up the work schedule.
Students are allowed to work on whatever they choose, as everything is practicing the skill we are learning.
Some kids go straight for the task cards-
While others go straight for their workbooks.
We haven't done an independent journal center yet-but that may become the '1st choice' once we do. Right now, I use the whole class lesson for journal instruction sometimes, until we get a little more comfortable with it.
While students are working, I'm either floating around the room, or pulling students to the back table to work.
How do I know which students to pull?
Well, there is where my masterpiece comes in!
Usually, skills will take us a few days (most MiF lessons are 2, if not 3 days). I give an exit slip at the end of the previous lesson, and look them over.
I check to see which ones need practice and where, and they go on my list to work with.
I'll also throw an entrance slip at them for morning work if it's a one day lesson, and do the same thing.
Once we're at the back table, I model the skill, and then we work through it a few times. Once they've shown me that they can do it independently, I release them to choose a center.
Each cell is a different time I've met with them-sometimes we cover more than one skill in a lesson!
When there is about 5 minutes left, I hand our the exit slips and have them start cleaning up. I do have them turn in the exit slips into a different bucket than my turn it bin-just so they don't get lost! :)
Hi! I've made some major changes to the way I run my Math block, so I thought I'd do a little mini-series showing how it evolved and what I do now. I hope you enjoy it!
When I first started teaching in my current district, I did Math Workshop-and loved it! I felt like I was reaching the needs of all my kids, and they were able to learn and practice at their level.
But since our math program was so old (they didn't even make it anymore), and with the new Common Core standards, we looked into purchasing a new program.
So my next year at the school, I was piloting Go Math! (which I didn't hate-but I didn't love it either).
Now, all through the Math Committee meetings, I had been opposed to Math in Focus, as I've found that it often goes above and beyond the Common Core, and if we're going to teach the Common Core, I think that we need to teach it well before trying to build upon and extend it (and ironically enough, I told my old principal this, and he was all like 'No, it's totally Common Core' at the meetings, but when I had my end of year meeting with him last year, he was all like 'Where's the Common Core?' Can I just say-I told you so!).
We did have some trainings toward the end of our pilot year (when we knew what we were going to pick), and at the beginning of the school year that made me feel a little more comfortable with Math in Focus.
Last year was our first year with it-and towards the end, I hated the way that my math block was running.
I wound up doing a lot more notebook entries to teach the kids, as everything had taken so long (what with snow days and delays), and I needed to at least expose the kids to things.
I thought long and hard about how I wanted my math block to look like last year, and with a little bit of inspiration from The Primary Gal, I came up with an idea.
First, I wanted to have entrance and exit slips for each lesson, so I could easily pull groups based on need and skill.
Second, I also wanted a quicker way to assess-as the tests sometimes took 2-3 math periods.
Third, I wanted to make better use of time and workbooks, and meeting the kids needs better.
And last, but certainly not least!, I wanted math to be more fun for the kids, as well as a little more interactive.
Since Math in Focus didn't come with any of the things I needed/wanted, I came up with the idea to make it myself!
So I put together a PD project to make what I needed.
A photo posted by Smiles & Sunshine (@smilesandsunshineteacher) on
Note: I have not yet made the videos-I wasn't sure if I was going to get the tech I needed (not yet), and I wanted to get the main part done first. If and when I get iPad and/or Chromebooks, I'll start on the videos.
After a couple of months, and almost a 100 hours, I finished!
Inside, I have quick checks (1 page assessments) with two types of data recording sheets.
Entrance Slips
and Exit Slips
Each chapter is divided by a Chapter sheet, and even the back cover is pretty!
As I don't have a TPT shop, this will not be for sale.
What's all this have to do with how I run my math block?
Well, let's get into {some of} the good stuff!
I start off each chapter with a quick check-which I then grade and keep them on my desk until we're done the chapter and the last quick check.
This way, parents (and kids!) don't freak out because of the low scores, and I send them home with the second quick check so they can see the growth they've made. We also graph our results in our Data Notebooks.
The quick check allows me to see who knows what, so I can get an idea of what we may need to spend more time on, and what we may need to spend less time on.
I also record their scores in a Google Spreadsheet, so I can keep track of their score changes (and use it for my evaluative purpose-using assessment to drive instruction-yada yada, blah blah blah ;)
Even the kids who started out high made some growth! The numbers in parenthesis represents the number of points the check was.
I got that idea from the SLO my team did last year-I was fascinated by giving the same test twice and seeing a huge difference in scores from beginning to end-which I think is much more helpful than the pretest from Math in Focus, which has little to do with the end of chapter test.
So, I have my newly made and beautiful products-and what do I do with them?
It's been a crazy few weeks, and while lots of learning has been going on, not a lot of picture taking as been going on!
It's nuts at how busy my class is keeping me-I often forget how far we come in a school year.
So, here is an update of what we've been working on - mostly anchor chart style. :)
First and foremast, the most important thing that has happened...
MY SHELVES WERE FIXED!! :D
Look at that beautiful gloriousessness! It's so pretty. It's so organized. I'm in love. :)
We've been spending some time talking about perseverance and how mistakes are okay.We've also been talking about how everyone is smart, but just in different ways. To go along with that, I recreated a chart I found on Pinterest.
We've also been learning about different ways to get along, and how we can start solving some of our own problems.
We've been focusing on sentences and meaning in writing.
Now for the biggie!
We've been spending a lot of time learning alllllll about reader responses and how to do them (as well as practicing them!). {Here are the posts I did last year, which is guiding my instruction this year. Post 1, Post 2}
We've just started learning about character traits, and have already learned about plot and setting.
We've covered a lot! We also been working on math-not to worry about that! We're almost done chapter 1, and will be starting chapter 2 soon.
Here's to the busyness of the beginning of the year starting to slow down soon!
Well, I've successfully survived one week and two days with my kids!
Some of them are going to keep me on my toes, but I think I have a pretty good class (Even the toe keepers!)! :)
Each year, I always work to build a classroom community/family (you can see how I do it through Responsive Classroom), and this year, I added in something that I learned from my Learn Like a Pirate book study.
Paul calls it Marble Theory, a way to show how everyone is smart, but we did it with base ten rods in my room (because I had enough for everyone, and they were already prepackaged in sets!)
Before we started, I had the kids brainstorm a list of things they could be 'smart' about.
Then, I passed our four cups, and a bag of 20 base ten rods to every student.
They needed to write two things they felt really 'smart' about, and two things they didn't feel as 'smart' about.
I showed them how to divided up their base tens blocks-more blocks go into the ones they are 'smart' about, with less blocks going into the 'not as smart' cups.
Once everyone had picked their things and divided up their rods, we took a gallery walk around the room, to see what they had. (And it was one of the quietest gallery walks ever! :)
Then, I had them come back and write the same thing for their cups (Reading & Writing, Math, Science, Social Studies) and had them reallocate their rods.
We took another gallery walk (another super quiet one!) to see our results.
After we had cleaned up, we talked about how different people have different levels of 'smarts' for everything that we do-but that we all had the same amount of smarts to start with.
We said it together a few times-we're all the same amount of smart-just in different ways. This led into my 'easy' discussion, how we don't use that words, because what one person finds easy, another one may find hard. That's because their 'smarts' are in a different area.
This then led into a discussion about even though it is hard, we need to keep trying and persevere, and change our mindset, and led to use starting this chart (which I pinned from Runde's Room, but came from Fieldcrest Elementary - please pin it from the source if you are going to pin it)
We're not quite done with the chart-we ran out of time-but we'll continue to work on it and it will be posted in our room to refer to.
So far, so good! I think the kids definitely enjoyed it, and hopefully we did an activity that I can refer back to all year long when we forget that we're all the same amount of smart.
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