Well I am happy to say I am feeling a little better. I taught for a day and a half with little to no voice, not easy at all. So as promised my guest post...Katie from Queen of the First Grade Jungle!
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| Isn't her family just adorable! |
I know most if not all of you are familiar with her and her AMAZING blog! I am pretty sure I owe at least half of my followers to her. I am so glad she "found me", she has been helpful, up lifting, and inspiring! I hope you all enjoy!
Click here to follow her!
Hi this is Katie from Queen of the First Grade Jungle. I am here to share a little bit about how I do math work stations and math journals. I had been searching for a new way to do math for a few months when work stations just fell into my lap. I mean literally everyone on the blogs was talking about Debbie Diller and her work stations. I read the book this summer and fell in love. I started implementing work stations the second week of school and now I could never go back to the old way of pencil paper filling out work book pages.
Here is how I organize my work stations. Looks WAY more complicated than it is. My kids go to 2 stations a day—would love to make it 3 but I don’t have the time in my schedule right now. Meeting with Mrs. King is stations 6 and 12. When I grouped kids I made sure that the 4 that come to me a close in skill level. Making me stations 6 and 12 are also great because I am meeting with 4 kids in a small group and 8 students a day. I also like this because I am meeting with each child every 3 days.
I have my baskets on these low shelves. My kids do a great job getting to them and cleaning up. We rarely have to review procedures. I like to introduce a new station in between the 2 stations. Meaning, after I have kids clean up a station we meet at the carpet and I have two students demonstrate the new work station. I like to keep games very simple but exciting (different manipulatives or seasonal) at the same time. I refuse to spend that precious time I have with small groups re-explaining how to play a game. As long as the kids are productively working with numbers/maipulatives, I don’t stop them to correct. For example, two kids were supposed to be playing Top-It with number cards to 50. When I looked over they were organizing the numbers sequentially on the floor. I almost jumped up to correct them, but I caught OCD me and reminded myself that their work was productive and developmentally appropriate. We also have a standard that talks about sequential order of numbers- somewhere I know we do :)
Just to give you an idea of what my work stations look like this week-
Station 1- Sorting Addition facts based on their sums. http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/2010/10/couple-of-math-things.html
Station 2- Board game to practice addition and subtraction Link--http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/2010/10/math-board-games.html (okay- I LOVE Cara Carroll)
Station 3- Find the Bone (computer game to work on number sense) Link --http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/DogBone/gamebone.html
Station 4- Nickel/Penny Grab (Students grab a handful of nickels and pennies and put them on a cute piggy I printed out to count them).
Station 5-Envisions computer game (Measuring - incorporates prediction and actual measurement)
Station 6-Meet with Mrs. King
Station 7- Tally Mark Memory (I have cards with tally marks to 20 and number cards. Students play standard Memory game matching the tally marks to the numbers).
Station 8- Addition Top It (Play like War. Students pull two cards and work addition problem on the board. Highest sum wins).
Station 9- Clear the board (Students “clear their board based on the sums)Link- http://www.kidscount1234.com/mathcentersandgames.html
Station 10- Tally around the Room (http://justaddclipart.blogspot.com/2011/07/wow.html)
Station 11- Measurement Basket (Lots of objects and kids practice with nonstandard measurement-paperclips, craft sticks, cubes)
Station 12- Meet with Mrs.King
Phew- I hope that was helpful. I think it is important to say that some of my games stay in for SEVERAL rotations. I think that kids need practice, practice, practice, with those math facts!
After setting all of this up, I felt the need for a word problem of the day. So I created the math journal.
Okay I didn’t invent the math journal, but you know what I mean :)
It is a combination of calendar, number of the day, and a word problem or flashback type problem.
You can download them here.
There are 20 prompts. I plan on making more once I gauge what my kids need more practice with later. I have really enjoyed the math journal, because I don’t catch my kids zoning out like they were before! I hope you enjoy!