Math Workshop: Hands On Independent Learning

So excited about cohosting Chapter 6 in our Guided Math book study! Don't forget to check out Mechele at Barrow's Hodgepodge who is hosting it with me!

In Chapter 6, Laney gave some components of math workshop and some examples. After reading it, I happily found I use a lot of these in my room! I decided to make a table (yep, I love them!) to show how I use them in my room.

Laney's Component	Where I Use It	How I Use It
Review of  Previously Mastered Concepts	Math Workstations	My math workstations are a great spiral review for students! As the year goes on, I try to keep units that we've learned in their stations so students can continuously work on them.
Math Fact Automaticity	Team Meeting, Math Workstations	These are easy and great to place in a workstation. I also use them while students are waiting for me to start our Team Meeting. They just grab a box of flashcards and work with their math partner on them.
Math Games	Math Workstations, Current Even, Team Meeting, Mini Lesson,	I try to make math fun, so we use games all throughout the day. Once they have learned it in a mini lesson or Team Meeting, they are ready for me to add it to their independent practice in Current Event or Workstations.
Problem Solving Practice	Math Workstations, Mini Lesson	I do a Problem of the Week which you can find more out about HERE.
Math Journals	Mini Lesson	I have students keep all their notes from our mini lessons in their math journals. They carry them with them all throughout math and can reference them any time. We also do a lot of closing activities that require a math write.
Computer Use	Math Workstations	I love using the computers! One workstation is always designated as the computer. One program I love to use is Xtra Math. It's great for fact automaticity and provides the teacher with weekly progress graphs for students. Best of all ITS FREE!

Now when I first read this book a few years ago, I loved the ideas Laney presented but HOW DID YOU RUN A WORKSHOP!!?!?!?! I have tried many different approaches, but last year I felt I had finally found one that worked for me! So if you are STILL wondering HOW, here's what I do! :) Please review my other Math Workshop posts, as they'll give you a better idea of my framework. Below will focus on what students do while you are in your meeting.

Just a refresher, in my room, I do 3 rotations. Team Meeting is with me, and Current Event and Workstations are independent.

Again, here is how my student's rotate through stations.

Rotation #	Workstations	Current Event	Team Meeting
1	Lions (bubble)	Giraffes (high)	elephants (developing)
2	Giraffes (high)	Elephants(developing)	Lions (bubble)
3	Elephants (developing)	Lions (bubble)	Giraffes (high)

Sometimes I will switch the developing and bubble groups just to keep things different. I always meet with my high group last however, and my bubble (average) and developing (low) first so that when they go onto other activities they understand what to do.

So, what do students do while you are in a Team Meeting (a meeting with a small group)?

MATH WORKSTATIONS
Just like Debbie Dillers book, I use activities that are review. Whether it's reviewing a concept from 5 weeks ago, to a concept taught yesterday, these stations are geared towards activities they understand and can practice independently. I have games, math books we've read aloud, and manipulatives. All of the activities are things I have already taught. There's nothing worse than hearing, "I don't know what to do!!" (although let's be honest, there's still times that I hear that!!)

 How I organize my math stations (I have about 10)

How students know which station to go to. The orange number is the workstation. 2-3 students can go to one station per day. I move the orange numbers at the end of every day. I try not to change stations until each student has rotated through, so that means I like the station to stay there for at least 2 weeks or more.

EXAMPLE MATH WORKSTATION

First off, all my math workstations have a menu.

 

As I teach new games that fall under that unit math station, I'll add it to the list. I also draw pictures next to it, showing the materials needed. It also helps remind them what game it is, and all the resources they will need to be successful with the activity. I keep this menu in a page protector, and write the menu with sharpie. That way it doesn't rub off, but can be removed completely with a little nail polish remover! Easy for when I need to change the station or pull out a game! I also velcro this inside one of those colored buckets you see above. Students can then pull it off to read it, and velcro it back when they clean up. That way it doesn't get lost!

Inside the colored bucket, I put a large folder with the number of the station.

Inside the folder I place games in ziploc baggies and page protectors. I always label them with the game name that corresponds with the menu.

In this particular game you'll see all the materials inside the page protector. Oh and you see that colored dot? My 3 groups also have a dot associated with them, so for some games, I differentiate them with a colored dot. This game is blue for my lower students, and contains math cards that are easier facts. I could put a red dot on for example, and then use the SAME game, but include challenging math cards for my higher students. Cool right?

One thing I am super big on is MATH TALK. I try to make sure every math station has a talking bubble.

Students use the talking bubble as a sentence stem to help them learn the vocabulary. You should hear them in my room! They love these things! If a station doesn't have one, they'll beg me for one. Again I always teach the stem before I put it in a station. Even my lower readers were able to recognize words since they practiced so much- talk about awesome for when they encounter these vocabulary words on quizzes! Win Win!! I'll tell you these are my FAVORITE thing to use. If you take anything away from this post... PLEASE try these. I learned about them from Debbie Diller in Math Workstations. She has a lot of great sentence stems.

Math workstations can be anything! Sometimes I'll include worksheets that correspond with a game so they can show accountability.

How do you assess students?

This is definitely a work in progress! If a station has work shown, they'll turn it in to me. Sometimes I'll have them come up and show me what they worked on during transition time. I also grade them on cooperation and participation.

CURRENT EVENT

 In this station, I make sure to have one activity the whole class is expected to finish. This can be an art project(sooo fun!), worksheet, game, poster, anything!! I usually explain the current event int he last few minutes of my minilesson so students know how to do this. I also ALWAYS check in with this group while my team meeting buddies are using the flashcards. This allows me to answer any last minute questions or give some quick feedback. I make sure the activity can be completed within 20 minutes (or I'll extend it to the next day.

This is an example of a fun current event project we did for place value. My mini lesson was on creating one of these as a class (which is pictured below! my students turned out MUCH more detailed products), my small groups that day were using whiteboards to make sure they new how to do expanded form, place value form, and written form for a number. We might have played a game that day practicing different ways to write a number.

In this project students were given a baggie with a random number of popsicle sticks and beans. They could use all of them or just a few. (They could only use 1-9 of each item). They then had a paper sheet of 4 hundreds to choose how many they wanted. I had ducks, hearts, flowers, houses, all kinds of creative pictures! Once they created their picture, they counted their hundreds tens and ones and showed the different ways to write the number.

What if students don't finish?

I always leave time at the end of the day for this. If it's still not finished they will be expected to take it home, or it will become a 0 for their grade for that day.

What if students finish early?

If its a game, they play again and again.

If its a project they can make another one.

Our math program comes with beautiful colored workbooks. Since I make up most of my activities, I don't use the worksheets from our workbooks very often. I always start out the year telling students they can do ANY page they want when they finish their current event, as long as they know HOW. They get really excited about it, especially when it's something they learned last year and still remember. Can you believe it, students getting excited about their workbooks? It's possible! Since we viewed them in a 'fun light', they'd even want to do these during free time! Crazy right?

What if students have questions while you're in a meeting?

I always teach my students to ask their partner first, then ask someone in their group, then if NO ONE could answer it they were to write me a note. They could drop it off to me while I was in group. I could read it when I was ready and get back to them.

What if students are messing around?

Okay, I give NO warnings. If they mess around or argue with each other ONE TIME, they pack up their things and become my shadow. That means they have to come sit in on our team meeting, not participate,  but listen. I learned this in Debbie Diller's book. Usually they grow bored and don't want to come back again. I feel like this helps me not interrupt my group to address the problem, AND they are learning math in the process of shadowing. I really push this the first few weeks, and to be honest, I didn't have a lot of off task behavior this year. They wanted to be in stations, not shadowing me.

I'm also linking up with Ms. Alley's Second Grade! Lots of great math ideas going around! :)

Okay wow this was LOOOOONG. I hope this was helpful. Please leave any questions, suggestions, exclamations! :)

Math Workshop: Team Meeting (Small Group)

I feel like I've tried typing up this post 10 different ways! This chapter is so long, and I feel like there is so much to discuss! Thank you to the awesome Mary at Pitner's Potpourri and Ms. Whiteley at Toad-ally Exceptional Learners for hosting this information packed chapter! :)

In my room, when it comes to small groups, I have students rotate through 3 different places. A sample rotation schedule may look like this:

Rotation #	Workstations	Current Event	Team Meeting
1	Lions (bubble)	Giraffes (high)	elephants (developing)
2	Giraffes (high)	Elephants(developing)	Lions (bubble)
3	Elephants (developing)	Lions (bubble)	Giraffes (high)

 
Sometimes I will switch the developing and bubble groups just to keep things different. I always meet with my high group last however, and my bubble (average) and developing (low) first so that when they go onto other activities they understand what to do. The extra reinforcement really helps them be successful when they are in independent learning situations (which is the workstations and current event rotations).

How do I organize my groups?
I love that Laney mentioned a ton of different ways to organize groups. In my room I stick to 3 groups which mean 3 rotations. I do weekly quizzes that help me to see how students are doing with the concepts being taught. If students are improving quickly or struggling with a concept, I can bump them to a different group that will better meet their needs. Obviously student work and math talk also drives this as well. Next year I'd like to do an anticipation guide for each unit at the beginning.

Every single student in my classroom is given a math partner as well. That is the person they sit with during mini lessons, and work with throughout math workshop. I change the partners as I feel the need, but will do a big change every unit. That helps keep it fresh! I partner students within the group they are in. In my class I use animal names, so if giraffes are a group, I partner my giraffes together. I try to partner a high giraffe with a lower giraffe. Same would be true for my other 2 groups. I have found that this helps me stay organized and easily be able to rotate groups without kids all over the place.

Team Meeting
I call my small group time: Team Meeting. We meet on the carpet in my room while everyone else is out in the rest of the classroom. I've found that meeting at a table is way too hard, and I love spreading out.

When students come to this station, I always have something waiting for them to work on. Sometimes it may be a word problem on the board, or fact flash cards. Anything they can do without me. During this time I am checking in around the room with students to make sure they have their materials, and any last minute questions. Once I am in Team Meeting, I am not allowed to be disturbed.

My bubble and developing small groups usually have a similar small group lesson. In my high group, we will grade whatever work was supposed to have been done for the day, and if all students completed it successfully, we will extend the lesson. I work in 2nd grade, so I might begin to introduce 3rd grade work to them. If they didn't understand the work they were supposed to have done, we will review it and do extra practice on it.

I sometimes introduce games to students in small group. These games eventually get put out into my math workstations rotation which I'll go into later in the week. I give students practice to do it as a group, and then work with their math partner. I can also differentiate the game between all 3 of my groups, even more hitting the skills that they need.

Important Notes
Here are some things that I make sure to do in my small group:

• It connects to the mini lesson and goal for the day. I have students revisit what we did in our mini lesson.
• At the beginning of the lesson, I will scaffold how to accomplish a task, frequently asking "What should I do now?" I allow them to walk me through how to do something.
• Students sit with their math partners, and will work with them towards the end of the lesson. A lot of times they will work on the activity they will be doing independently. Once I see that they can be successful with it, I will send them out into the room to get started without me.
• Give feedback! Tell what they are doing well, and what you liked about their thinking. Target in on exactly what might be confusing a student, and tell them what you see.

My Planner
I use a planner to help organize all of my workshop. I have found it useful, and am posting in hopes you will find it useful too! Keeping track of 3 small groups a day can be a challenge, so on my planning page I have included the objective and what I see students doing. I always left a place for what to address next. 

 Click HERE to download the 2 page file.

If you need a more visual please check out the videos on Ms. Whiteley's blog at Toad-ally Exceptional Learners.

I hope this was helpful.. small group meetings is such a hard concept to fit into one blog post!

Math Workshop: Whole Group

Oh whole group. I have a love/hate relationship with it! I love being able to teach one concept in one swing, cutting down on prep work and planning. I hate when I see students start to stare off... or in my second graders case- making EVERY single thing in their pencil box turn into an airplane/spinning top/microphone! (Oh yes, I had one student who just LOVED to sing silently into his eraser)

Chapter 4 in Guided Math is all about whole group lessons. The lovely Sweet Seconds and Once Upon a Teaching Blog are hosting the chapter. They have some great ideas, and are hosting a link exchange, so definitely check them both out!

One of my favorite things about this book had to be the way in which they help you wrap your brain around a math mini lesson. This is something that was absolutely impossible for me to understand as a beginning teacher! Here are the 4 components Laney outlines as a minilesson. Underneath I have put a few examples of what I might do.

CONNECTION - How will you hook your students?

• I will use my dogs (Hunter and Max) a lot and tell a story about a problem they encountered that pertains to the math concept being taught.
• Show a picture/prop, or some sort of visual to get students thinking about a concept. For example, when teaching area/perimeter I will show them some real life examples where this is used. Like apartments! Many of my students live in them, and knowing perimeter/area helps place furniture, know the space in a room, etc.
• Restate a math concept from the previous day and expand on it today. Sometimes I'll let them know we are doing third grade work! And having taught third grade previously, some of my lessons I actually USED in third grade!

TEACHING POINT - How will I model the concept?

• I will ALWAYS introduce our objective for the day. "Mathematcians, today we will...." After they hear it, I will read it again while students repeat after me. I use a wonderful Whole Brain Teaching method here called "Mirror". (I LOVE WBT!!!)
• Model, model, model! Just like in reading! The teacher thinks aloud! I usually have my students sitting on the carpet while I use a whiteboard or chart paper to map my thinking and create anchor charts!
• Students listen! Many of my mini lessons go over because we start going off on a tangent talking! I really need to work on keeping talking to a minimum, and focusing on getting the main point of the lesson across.

ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT - How will students participate?

• Think/pair/share - I always have students sitting next to an assigned math partner.
• Whiteboards!!! Such a great and easy way to assess students. Perfect for knowing which students will need extra help, and which are getting it.
• Visual Cues - Have students hold up cards (A B C D), or fingers, or hand motions for true/false to quickly assess understanding.

LINK TO ONGOING WORK - How and why does this fit in to our math learning?

• I'll be honest, I need to work better at closing a lesson. I'd like to have students retell what it is they learned. Perhaps we can review the objective.
• Most of the time I have explained how this will fit in with their rotations today, and our expectations on what students will be doing during math workshop. I expect students to understand their mathematician JOB for the day before letting them go. If anyone does not understand, they can stay on carpet for clarification, as well as talk to their math partner.

I also found a wonderful writing mini lesson template that follows a VERY similar format to Laney's. I now try to make ALL my mini lessons in ALL subjects match this outline. Check out the Writing Mini Lesson Template HERE.

Although my math workshop (which you can read about how I organize it here!) uses mostly small group, there are times when I will take a whole day doing a whole group lesson. I usually refer to this an an anchor lesson. One of my FAVORITE lessons is when introducing 2-d geometry. Laney mentions using math literature, and I use it frequently!!! Here's a short outline of a sample anchor lesson I use with the WONDERFUL book The Greedy Triangle.

Hook/Prior Knowledge- I always start asking students what they KNOW about shapes. Laney mentioned KWL charts, and this is a great prelude to 2d and 3d geometry. We brainstorm shapes we know, and discuss what we know about them. It's a great way to see which students might already know the 2d shapes we will encounter in the book.

Goal/Objective- Here I will explain to students their mathematician job for the day. We will describe 2-dimensional shapes using The Greedy Triangle and a foldable. After we have gone through the objective, I will give them a 6 flap foldable. First I fold it in half hamburger style.

Then I fold the sides into meet the half fold I made.

Next I cut each flap into thirds, so there is a total of 6. I definitely premake these for my second graders, so they don't worry about cutting or folding. On the front we will write 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. These will be the number of sides on each shape.

Inside we will draw and write the name of the shape as we learn about it in the book.

After students have folded and written their numbers on it, we walk to the carpet (where they, as always, sit by their math partner) and get ready to listen to the story. They bring a book, pencil, and their foldable so they can write as we read.

Active Engagement - When finished with the story, students will be going on a scavenger hunt around the school to find the 2d shapes in real life! This a great way to get them actively engaged, and looking for the shapes on their own! We use this table below. Before going out, we review the shapes we learned, draw a picture, and write the number of sides again. FIND IT HERE (I still have no clue how to embed google docs... anyone help?)

Then we line up and head out!

Closing - Upon coming back to class we discuss what we found. I always close the lesson by discussing what shape was the easiest to find, and which was the hardest. We talk about why we think some were easier than others.

Every year I teach this anchor lesson, and every year I LOVE it! Something I did not do but would like to do is create an ANCHOR CHART. I'm not sure it would be beneficial to do it during the read aloud, the next day, or after the read aloud? Do you have any thoughts?


I hope this was helpful! :) Can't wait to hear what everyone else thought of Chapter 4! :)


Oh and I MUST give a big thank you to Brandi at Sucess in Second Grade, Jodi at Southern Sweetie in Second, Amy at Where Seconds Count, Katie and Lisen at Second Grade Smarty Pants and Heather at Teach It Today for awarding me :

I cannot express how much I appreciate your thoughtfulness! I'll be passing it along this week! :)

Math Workshop: Little Extras

Are y'all following the Guided Math book study? It's pretty spectacular! Dana at 3rd Grade Gridiron did an excellent job of hosting Chapter 2- equip with a powerpoint and voice recording! Can we say awesome?!? I wanted to link up with her, and share a few ways I use some of the ideas outlined in the book.

GROUP AREAS
Something mentioned in the book is having areas for whole group, small group, and workshop areas. Here is a visual of how my room is laid out:

The purple is where I do my whole group mini lessons and take my small groups. This part of my room is where we have the large carpet so it works out perfectly. Alongside the wall I have some plastic bins which house math manipulatives, whiteboards, extra pencils and erasers, and any graded work or other things needed for the day.

The yellow is where math station students go. They are next to all the supplies they need and can work either in the desks or on the floor or even the kidney table desk to the left.

The green is where students go who are working on the current event. It's right up next to the board where I might leave examples of what they are to do. Sometimes I will even project directions or reminders using the ELMO.

One of my favorite things about how my room is set up, is that the yellow and green parts are connected to the purple part! This means that students who might need help can sit alongside the carpet and I can quickly check in with them easily.

PROBLEM OF THE DAY/WEEK
This is something new I did this year and enjoyed! I broke mine up into a problem of the week. I did NOT come up with the super cute IPAWS acronym (althought I wish!). I got the idea from proteacher (another addiction of mine!). I believe the original author was Ms. Sanchez who has a super cute I PAWS worksheet too.

 Click HERE for the google doc version.

P - Monday

A - Tuesday

W - Wednesday

S - Thursday

On Fridays I would leave time for students to come up and present how they solved their IPAWS. You can do this by having poster paper up for them to write their responses on, or students could use the board and give a presentation. Lots of different ways! If you have a way you share problems, please do share! I'd love more!

What's the "A" box all about? The A box would contain something like 'draw a picture' 'work backwards' 'act it out'. I teach problem solving strategies, post them in the room, and then students can refer to those to help solve problems. In the A box, they would just write 'draw a picture' or whatever strategy they chose to use. Tuesday's we would discuss what we could use, and students can choose their own when they are able to start doing problem of the week's individually. At the beginning of the year we do these together.

VOCABULARY

I always have vocabulary posted on one of the boards in my room. I'm thinking this year I will retire words around the board or high up towards the ceiling, and make sure current words are actually ON the board for students to see.  That way they'll be up all year long. I always have students copy the vocabulary word I teach into their notebooks as well. We write the word, the definition, then draw a picture. Anyone else have some other suggestions on teaching math vocabulary?

This is an example of what students glue into their notebooks.

MATH JOURNALS

I have students write notes on one side, then flip it over and write math work on the other. In the notes side, we glue in foldables, vocabulary words, write examples. On the math work side students might solve a problem or do a quick write about a closing question I might ask. I think I may just combine it all this year, and have students really take care of what they are writing. I'd also like to put a table of contents in like I do for science. I have been pinning some great notebooks, so you can take a look at what I have found HERE.

I'd like to get better with making math anchor charts this year, and displaying them. I have found so many great ones on pinterest that have been quite inspiring. I've also been pinning lots of math literature as that is one of my FAVORITE ways to get students connected to skill being taught.

I hope you have found some useful ideas today! In my next post I'll go more in depth into what I do for each station (current event, math stations, team meeting) and how I set it all up! Again PLEASE leave any questions or suggestions! There is still so much more I'd like to improve!

Oh! ANNNND! I am going to participate in a new blog completely centered around awesome pinterest pins! There will even be themes at times such as 'back to school' or 'thanksgiving'. How cute does that sound? Come join in on the fun!!