Math Is Under Way (or will be soon)

There were extra adults in my room Friday morning for 30 minutes. That led me to rearranging my order of lessons. The 2 helpful ladies engaged with the children in a patterning activity with small bears, dinosaurs, rabbits, frogs and kittens. I sat at my kidney table and quickly assessed most of the students in 2 areas. One-to-one counting to 20 and writing numerals to 20. Now I will take that information and create groups for instruction, remedial work and extension. I got the idea from Amanda at


She did the Guided Math book study this summer and I learned a lot from her.

I am excited to get my version of Guided Math and math work stations going next week.

My (pie in the sky) Plan:
1. Minilesson: teach the lesson from the manual
2. 3 groups  Me: the low group for remedial work
                   the bubble group: work with math stations I created this summer
                   the high group: complete workbook pages
3. Minilesson: review or teach something else (problem solving, etc.)
4. 3 groups  Me: the bubble group
                    the high group: work with math stations
                    the low group: complete workbook pages
5. Minilesson: math facts (addition or subtraction)
6 Final 3 groups: Me: the high group for enrichment/extension
                            the low group: math stations
                            the bubble group: complete workbook pages

I have an aide in my class during this time, so I plan on having her keeping tabs on the groups working on stations or workbook pages (depending on who is doing what).

While I was looking through my math manual I discovered 6 ideas for graphing/data collection for the first unit. The first one mentioned was number of letters in our names (did that). Another was to use a pan balance to talk about more/less/same. I gave each student a hexagon from the pattern blocks (which were easy to find since I spent a Saturday organizing) and one at a time they added their block to the side that described them (boy or girl).

What a hoot.

Some wanted to make the balance even. Some wanted the girls side to "win." Some wanted the boys side to "win."

In the end the girls side was heavier. Kinda surprised me. Yes, I know, I really should have know the girls to boys ratio before school started. But I was busy with other things (like painting and Mod Podging).

Then we spent time talking about what they knew from looking at the balance. LOVE that I have found a way to have these discussions (this was one area that scared me last summer {don't like to say last summer, it is only 2 weeks ago :(} while I was reading Guided Math).

We also had time to describe a penny. Hope to add more to it over the next days.

Next week we will start Mountain Math. Wow, I need to rest this weekend so that I am ready for next week--it is going to be busy. And I haven't even talked about language arts yet!