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! :)

Monday Made It Classroom Jobs

Okay before I start this post, can I just tell you how productive I feel today?!?

1. 2nd day of bootcamp - hello summer body!
2. Took dogs on a long walk.
3. Pulled weeds in the front yard.
4. Completed my Monday Made It!

And it's only noon! For me, this is a mighty accomplishment! Although now I have a heating pad on my lower back because I think I might have pulled something? Hopefully not. I have a lot more bootcamp left to do!

On to my Monday Made It. I was inspired by one of my pins:

I bought all of my supplies BEFORE I went ahead with my safari theme for next year's classroom, but I think it will still work. I've always had my job board called Helping Hands so I thought this was too cute NOT to make.

First I bought 12x12 scrapbook paper from Hobby Lobby, and cut it into 6 pieces. The pieces are 6 x 4 inches. You can get 6 pieces out 1 scrapbook page.

Then I added clipart and the job title, printed it out and glued it to all the different patterned papers.

To make it easy to change the little hands, I bought this Velcro at Lowes.

Then I attached the Velcro to the paper, and the back of the hands. It turned out like this:

Feel free to save this hand outline and use it! I actually drew this myself! How I love Paint Shop Pro. :)

I'm excited to post these up in my room! Last year I was using index cards taped to my cabinets, and they were forever falling off. Super annoying.

I would love to post the little clipart, but I have found them from various places on the internet, and don't know about copyright and all that with them. I've had the same clipart for about 5 years now and have NO CLUE where they came from.

But something I CAN share with you is a list of all my jobs! :) Click here!!!

In my room EVERY student has a job. We do a classroom economy. It is hands down, my favorite management tool and valuable teaching. If there was one thing I would suggest to new teachers- it would be this! Here's a list of some things we do:

• Each student applies for a job every 2-3 weeks. (You can make it longer if you like!) Their application must be neat and in complete sentences. I'll share my applications when my computer is back up and running.
• We create class money at the beginning of each year. We vote on the design. I copy 1s 5s and 10s. Money is given out for participation, great answers, great behavior, jobs done- anything really.
• We create a bonuses chart (where students can earn money) and taxes chart (where students pay ME money). As a class we decide on the prices as well.
• Each student has a tax chart (which I'll share later too). At the end of the day they add up their tally marks and place the money on top of their chart. The tax collector signs off on the day that taxes were paid and brings me the money.
• We have a class store where students can buy things. I don't do a treasure box, this takes its place. Students have to count their money to make sure they have enough to buy stuff. Most of the things I have for sale aren't items. Sure I have pencils and erasers, but we do more classroom rewards. Like teacher's desk for a day, shoes off, lunch with teacher, 10 min computer time, free homework pass, 10 min class pet time, choose first at stations for the day, pillow for the day, stuffed buddy for the day, etc.
• I use to have a banker/cashier when I taught 5th grade, but I found it a little hard for my 2nd graders this year. Maybe I'll tackle it again this year when I am more organized. Anyone else have advice on this?

If any of you are interested, I'll try to make a post going more in depth when I get back into my classroom so I can take pictures. :) I LOVE CLASSROOM ECONOMIES!

Do you have any classroom jobs that you love and couldn't live without? Any favorites you do with a classroom economy?

And don't forget to view my post about the Safari Clip Chart I made! I left a link for you to download it for free on my post!!

Safari Clip Chart Freebie

Earlier this week I had posted a clip chart for my Monday Made It. Well I just put it together today and am thrilled with how it turned out!

 Here's the long version of the whole thing. I tried to keep it color coordinated with the animal prints. From pink all the way down to red.

 Here is a close up of the chart.

Here is a closeup of the middle. I have put little safari hats on the end of my clips with numbers on them. That way students (who always have a number in my room) can move their clip easily.

At the end of every day, I plan on having my teacher's assistant (student classroom job) keep track on a behavior chart of where each student was. This will be kept in a binder. They will use markers (corresponding with the color on the chart) and place a colored dot next to the students number. This will be a great tool to use for conferences or any meetings I may have about the student.

I have put it in my TPT store, for free if you are interested in downloading it! Just let me know what you think :) I appreciate it! It's my first actual made by me item! And I found out that you can turn power points into PDF files, who knew?!?!

And I'm linking up with Kreative in Kinder for some awesome blog hopping freebies!