Running the Math Block ~ Part 3: Practice, Practice, Practice

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 grabbed a set from Teaching with a Mountain View that was on Back to School Math {free!} 

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!

Stay tuned for part 4-how I organize it all!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn