I absolutely love to teach math to first graders! There is so much 'newness' and so many light-bulb moments! I always share pictures of my math block on Instagram, and it only makes sense to now do a little blog post to give you the lowdown of how I run it.
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Here is a little glimpse at how I run my math block each day!
We start our math time with calendar time.
Afterwards, I do a direct teaching lesson.
This is where I model the concept we are learning for the day.
This past week we began to learn about place value. One day, my direct instruction lesson was a read aloud! I read this book to students and I used my magnetic base 10 blocks on my whiteboard to help deepen their understanding.
After, I model the concept we are learning for the day, students participate in an activity to help deepen their understanding. I like to make this time as hands on as possible.
Here students are counting materials. Our goal was to find strategies to make counting easier.
Some students made connections with the read aloud and figured out that making groups of 10's really is easier!! Some students didn't quite grasp that concept, so I made sure to help guide their thinking during this time. Differentiation right here ya'll!! Easy peasy!
Much of the time I like for students to record their thinking in some way. Here I simply gave students a blank white piece of paper. I told them to draw a picture of what they did, tell me the total and some groups were ready to tell me how many groups of tens they made and how many loose ones they had left over. Helloooo place value understanding!!! :-)
After our active learning time, I sometimes give them an activity sheet to complete so I can assess their understanding. We always come back together as a class and discuss our learning for the day. Then, students are off to work with their assigned math station for 20 minutes.
I project the timer onto the board for students to see. It really helps keep us all on track.
Find the online timer here.
The math stations that students do are concepts that have already been taught.
Here is our rotation board and where the stations are stored.
The kids visit one math station a day. ST math is completed on the Ipad and allows students to progress through first grade math concepts at their own pace.
The On My Own station is where students complete an interactive math journal activity.
You can find this odd and even math journal activity here.
Tubs 1, 2 and 3 contain hands on math station activities like the batty addition sort seen below.
If students finish their math tub activity early, then they can choose a math game to play until math station time is over.
While students work on their math stations, I pull a group of students who need additional support, review of old concepts or I pull my high groups for a 'challenge' activity.
Sometimes, I will pull kids who are doing one of the math tub activities and do it with them, if I know this is a concept they struggle with.
You can also read another math workshop post from me here!
Have a fabulous day!!
