Math Workshops: Great Resources

 I've been seeing so many great posts on Math Workshops that I thought I'd gather some of them up so you can check them out too.

1.  The first is from Mandy Gregory from Mandy's Tips for Teachers.

This post includes a FREEBIE that gives a 6 day plan for setting up your Guided Math program. 

(There's another one for setting up Writer's Workshop, too!)

Click here to access her blog post about Math Workshops. 

2.  Next from Mrs. Beattie's Classroom:

In this post Erin from Mrs. Beattie's Classroom explains how she organizes and runs her Math time using the M.A.T.H. acronym. 

She also has a good selection of products in her TpT STORE for you to use during Math Workshop time.  These resources are focused on Grades 2-4.

 The Growing Bundle is on sale right now.  It is mostly made up of centers that you can use while you are working with small groups.  The center packages have varying numbers of activities included. For example the fractions centers file contains 13 different activities for students. 

This Odd and Even Numbers pack is a FREE SAMPLE of Erin's centers.  It includes three different activities: a game for 2 players and 2 activities for individual students.  One of these uses manipulatives and would also useful for small group instruction.

3.  Reagan Tunstall from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits has oodles of ideas. This is a recent post showing her newly created bundle of Math lessons for whole/small group. A whole year's worth!  I was so impressed that I bought it during the TpT BTS sale and it is worth every penny. A truly impressive document!  The post has a FREEBIE SAMPLE of the package.

Another post from Reagan tells how she sets up her Math Workshop time and offers these FREEBIE POSTERS.

4.  Tammy at The Owl Teacher did a 4 part series on Math Workshop to kick off 2016. She presents LOTS of great info on how she implements it in her classroom.

HERE IS THE LINK to the first installment, which is a quick overview. 

PART 2 is a rundown of Math "stretchers" that she uses as warm ups. 

PART 3 is a detailed breakdown of how she runs her Math block. 

PART 4 is a brief post on assessment. 

I found lots of useful info in this series, especially the second and third parts. Tammy included links ahead and back in each post to help you easily navigate between them (you don't have to come back here every time, but I did put links in the pictures above).  

5.  Dr. Nikki Newton has a Guided Math blog that you can visit HERE.

She has HUNDREDS of posts on this site for you to peruse. They include categories such as:

Assessment, Differentiated Instruction, During the Guided Math Lesson, Math Centers, and Math Workstations.  Many of these include links to resources that you can use in your Math Workshops.

Here is one that I plan to use with my third graders this year:

She also has an excellent PINTEREST BOARD for you to check out.   

I hope this post has been useful to you.  I know I certainly got LOTS of great ideas and information as I was putting it together!

Math workshop - schedule plus freebie

I have done Guided Reading workshops and run Language Arts centers in my classroom for years, but until three years ago I had never thought of applying these ideas to Math.  But what better place to meet with small groups of students!  In my opinion the benefits of teaching Math to a few students at close range is even more beneficial than with LA.  There are so many ways that students construct wrong ways of doing things in Math and small groups offer the best opportunity to either nip these in the bud or avoid them altogether, since the students are much more likely to be giving their full attention in this more intimate setting.

I am fortunate to have a large bank of time for Math.  Although I am only teaching 3 days/week, I am only teaching LA, Math, and Art, so I can schedule 90 minutes each day for Math.

Our Math time breaks down like this:
10 minutes - Math facts review with a partner 
20 minutes -  Meet together at the carpet for group instruction.  During this time I introduce new concepts or review what we have been working on, give them the rundown on the individual work they'll be doing that day, and do a quick spiral review of concepts.  I made a set of cards (grade 2) for these.  If you'd like a set for free click HERE.  I cut them into individual months, mounted them on construction paper, laminated them, and put them onto a ring that I hang on my Math wall for easy access.
20 minutes - Individual seat work and marking.  (Click HERE to see how Math is marked in my classroom.  There's a freebie in this post, too.)
30 minutes - Math centers
10 minutes - Math writing

I meet with my small groups during the last hour of the Math block, starting with the group that needs the most help.  Then I work through the other groups.  I don't have time for every group, every day, but I will have met with the first group three times and usually at least twice with the others.

When I first got started using Math workshops I tried rotating the various activities in 20 minute blocks, like I do for Language Arts.  One group does seat work, while others are at centers, working on Math facts, doing Math journals or meeting with me.  I set up a rotation board for the different groups and we did our Math block this way for several months, but I wasn't really satisfied that this was the best set up for me.
To begin with I often forgot to set my timer so they would rotate.  (This wasn't really a major objection and could've been overcome by setting a timer on my phone.) 
More concerning was that the activity the students were doing didn't always fit neatly into a 20 minute time slot.  Math facts usually need less - by the time 10 minutes was up they were ready to move on and often got distracted when it went longer.  Their seat work sometimes took longer, sometimes less, depending on the students' Math abilities, so I'd have to make extra papers for the fast finishers to do each day, and the students who were struggling didn't get finished.  Math centers definitely needed more time.  Often they would be part way through a center without having recorded their work and time would be up.  This was very frustrating for them and for me.  Also the reason I forgot to send them on to their next rotation was usually that I needed more time with the group I was working with.
So I decided that they would all do their seat work, centers, and writing at the same time (except the ones who were working with me).  The only challenge that this presented was that I needed more options for centers, which will the topic for the next time I post about Math.

I am linking up with Third Grade Doodles for Math Workshop Monday.  To see more ideas for Math workshop click HERE.   She's got a great Giveaway going today.