Math Strings

What are Math Strings?
They're groups of mental math problems that build on each other in some way.

How I Do Them:

• The kiddos sit "theater seating."  Everyone's chair faces foreword (which involves everyone moving their chair because of how my groups are set up) and they have nothing in their hands.
• On chart paper, I write a problem.
• When kiddos have an answer, they make a sign-language letter a, putting their thumb on their mouth (I don't know how to better describe it!)  This shows me they're ready and helps them to not blurt out the answer.
• I call on one kiddo for the answer and write it down, not saying if it's correct or not.
• I ask everyone if there are any other answers and write those down too.
• I call on kiddos to explain how they got their answer and record on the chart paper what they did, putting their name next to it.
• I have 3-5 kiddos give explanations.  The more difficult the problem, the more strategies I do.
• If the strategy I'm trying to get them to doesn't come up, I bring it up as my strategy.
• At the end, if I want them to know the name of a certain strategy, I tell them "what mathematicians call" the strategy some of them were using.  For example, "I want to teach you a new name for a mental math strategy.  Mathematician's call Kevin and Bryan's strategy compensation." (pointing to where I had written Kevin and Bryan's explanations earlier).

The blurred out parts are their names.  "M.F." means memorized fact.

Do you believe the kiddo who said 18 x 3 was a memorized fact?  No, me neither, but I still put it up!
At least no one said 48 x 3 was a memorized fact!

Although I knew about these last year, I only did it once or twice.  I'm doing them almost every day in math now and am getting FANTASTIC mathematical thinking from the kiddos!  

Bonus:  They LOVE it. The one day we didn't do it last week, they were asking why.  Every time I get their attention during math for a transition, they ask if it's mental math time.  I love the excitement!

Math Workshop

First full week of school complete!  I wasn't sure I or the kiddos were going to make it those last couple of hours, but we did. 





We're starting to get into full academic swing now.  As I mentioned in my Monday Made It post, I'm trying out Math Workshop this year.

I'm really excited and nervous about it.  We switch classes for math, but we don't have the same kiddos all year.  We've divided the curriculum into six parts.  The first we do with out homeroom kids at the beginning of the year, the second we do with a leveled group.  Then, we each take one of the remaining four parts and teach it four times, once to each leveled group.  It works out to having each group for just over a month.  One group I'll have twice (first and last rotation).  I love getting to really focus in on one part of the curriculum so that I can develop awesome lessons, but the rotating kids makes establishing routines difficult.

I decided to spend time this week really getting down math workshop with my homeroom kiddos while still getting through what I need to in order to be ready for our first rotation.  Since I'll have some of them in each math group, I hope that their knowledge of my routines will help others learn them faster.

We did two full rounds of math workshop this week, one on Monday/Tuesday and one on Wednesday/Thursday.  Each day, students did two rotations.  On the first day of the round, I did a short whole class lesson first and on the second day, I gave a short quiz at the end.   Friday was the test for the topic.

My plan is to continue with that basic schedule, except when we do investigations or longer problems that take a whole math class.

What I'm Loving:

• Meeting with every kiddo in a small group.  I don't think there was any point last year that I had such a good idea of where individual students are as I do now.
• Quote from a (somewhat difficult) kiddo on day two: "Are we doing math workshop again today?"  Me: "Yes we are."  Kiddo: "Yes!" (complete with celebratory arm gesture)
• I'm actually fitting in automaticity practice.
• The quick quizzes have shown me holes in their understanding and knowledge that can be so easy to correct once I know they're there.  On the first quiz almost everyone missed "What is the value of the underlined digit?" questions.  The next day, I taught them what the question asked.  They almost all got it right the next time!

Challenges:

• Math took almost an hour and a half every day this week.  Once we start rotating, I get an hour.
• I haven't found time to correct their At-Your-Seat work.  I'm worried their practicing incorrectly and that they don't feel accountable for it.
• Of course there are those trouble makers who aren't actually working when they aren't at my small group.
• I want to spend more small group time with my struggling kiddos, but since it is a rotation, if I don't keep the time of each one equal, they aren't all getting to do everything.  Maybe I need to make it more workshop-like. Hmmm...
• This week, our pacing was one lesson per day, so I did two lessons per rotation.  Next week, we're doing two or three lessons per day.  I'm not sure how to fit all of that in!

Even though my challenge list has more items than the things I'm loving list, the ones on the things I'm loving list are so important to me and make me feel like I am doing the best for the kiddos.  All of the challenges are things I can play around with to try to work out.

How do you structure your math time? Have you figured out how to deal with any of my challenges?

Monday (Thursday) Made It Time Again

I can't believe I forgot about Tara's Monday Made It!  When I logged onto blogger Monday morning for my short burst of wake-up blog reading,  I was excited to see everyone's made its.  Ah, too bad I don't have a made it to post about my 5am brain said.

WHAT?

I have made so much in the first week of school!  It seems like every time I have a moment to breathe I'm making something!  I realized this after I got home.  My brain was apparently working better last night.

BUT ...

I didn't have any pictures.  So I'll take pictures tomorrow and post tomorrow night.

Tuesday night:  I forgot to take pictures.

Wednesday night: Took pictures but just too tired (didn't get home until 9:30!!!!).

So here I am now, somewhat awake, knowing that I have made things, and armed with pictures to prove it.

My Math Board

I'm trying Math Workshop this year.  My district is starting to heavily heavily suggest we do a Daily 5 type structure for math.  Since I'm just dipping into Daily 5 for reading this year, I don't feel ready to do it for math too.  When I read about the Math Workshop Rotations on Clutter-Free Classroom, I realized that would fit perfect!  I just changed my M from Math Facts to Mental Math.  Because of that change, I made my own board items instead of buying Clutter Free Classroom's.  Once I have a  few days of workshop under my belt, I'll post about that, but for now, here is my board:

The whole board.  The student's names are listed under their group in the blurred out area.

Close up of assignment part of board.

Close up of rotation schedule

Behavior Clip Chart

I'm trying out the ever-popular clip chart this year.  I'm not sure where I first heard this idea from (let me know if you know!), but here's my incentives:  Get to Excellent Effort, get a sticker on your clip.  Get 6 stickers on your clip, get a new, prettier clip.  Repeat until you get the gold sparkly clip.  They're into it, and it's been working great so far ... until today when I basically forgot it existed so the entire class was still on Ready to Learn at the end of the day, even though they were fantastic.  Oops!

I just printed black letters on white paper and then used scrapbook paper to make it colorful.  I laminated each one with a thin piece of cardboard behind it.

I'm excited the monthly Made-Its start next week.  With back to school night next Thursday, I know I'll be busy this weekend making more!

Professional Development: Math

This summer (and into the fall), I'm taking a professional development math course. Right now, I'm half way through it (very strange schedule with huge chunks of time between classes).  The course focuses on us doing math and really understanding the math we are teaching. They've shown us so many alternate strategies (other than standard algorithms) that I'm excited to try out with students.  There's just a little bit of pedagogical discussion.  The instructors keep telling us that it is our job to reflect on what we do in class at home to see how it applies in our classroom.  I'm going to share that reflection with you.  


This class has really gotten me thinking about how I was as a math student.  Math was always very very easy for me.  I didn't really have to work at math until I got to calculus (I know, half of you now hate me, sorry!).  But ... I never really loved math.  Even though it was my strongest subject, I never once considered majoring in it in college.  Sure, there were little pieces that I enjoyed, but overall it was just motions I went through.


During this professional development, I've really enjoyed some of the math problems we've been presented with.  Other times, it's still just going through those motions, finishing quickly, and waiting for everyone else to finish.  During that waiting time, I started thinking about the difference between the problems I'm excited about and those I'm not.  I realized that I'm excited for the ones that challenge me. They are usually ones that can be solved more than one way or that I can extend the problem in some way because the contexts are so real.  Other times, they are just so challenging that I feel proud for finishing them.  Looking back on my school experiences with math, it was the same types of problems and activities that I enjoyed.


I've realized that I am not teaching math in the way that would excite me as a student.  The most boring parts of this math professional development are the times that most resemble the majority of my math instruction.  This realization has added "re-think how I structure math" to my summer to-do list and given it a high priority.  I need to organize my math instruction so that students get the chance to solve problems that they will be interested in and that will make them feel proud for being able to do more often.  I need to get them more involved.  


I can't plan specific lessons yet because I don't know which parts of our math curriculum I will be covering this year.  We have students rotate through the four 4th grade teachers, so each teacher only teaches part of the curriculum.  This gives students the chance to work with different teachers and lets us really focus in on one area and get really good at teaching it.  We will decide at the beginning of the year who is teaching what.  Over this summer, though, I really want to focus on the organization and routines of my math time.


How do you get students excited for and interested in math?