Guided Math Rotations & Explanations! This summer I taught a guided math class for my district.
I was able to teach this class 8 times with a mixture of 8 different groups of teachers grades 1-5. Although I was leading these sessions, I also learned so much from the participants about what guided math looks like in a variety of classrooms. I also learned about what struggles teachers have and what triumphs they experienced! Why I NOW Love Teaching Math: Setting up Math Rotations. If you know me, you know I am in loooove with Daily 5!
Ever since incorporating it into my classroom last year, I have loved seeing the variety of skills and strategies my students are working on each and every day. I also love that the segments are short, so we all stay motivated and the energy for learning stays high. I have been wanting to redo how I teach math for a while. Why I NOW Love Teaching Math: Setting up Math Rotations. Getting It Started Saturday: Math Rotations {Part 1} With the start of the school year around the corner, I wanted to go a bit more in-depth with some of the systems I use in class and give you some additional details for how I get them started (sometimes the hardest part, right?!).
I'm calling this mini-series Getting It Started Saturday! I am beyond in love with Math Rotations, but it took me a while to take the first step and actually start them up in my class. Starting Daily 5 gave me some confidence, but what worried me the most was the management, grouping, and time crunch that math presents each day (we have a 60-minute math block). If you haven't read my Math Rotations posts, I recommend reading them to get some general background knowledge about each of the pieces and parts. Each day begins with kids going straight to their first rotation. I *always* make the anchor chart of expectations with my class. Here's how mine looked last year: We worked on one section per day, so this took us about a week to introduce. Math Rotations: Teacher Time.
Thank you all so much for your feedback and great questions to how I start setting up Math Rotations in my class!
I am planning on doing quite a bit more in this series, including a post on each of the rotation options as well as some Q&A, so if you're ever interested in reading all of the series, be sure to click the icon above and/or the new button on the top sidebar. I wanted to start with the simplest rotation choice, Teacher Time. This rotation choice for me was the easiest to prepare, since it was what I was going to teach anyway-- it required very little additional prep work.
I began preparing for Teacher Time by splitting my kids into three groups based on a quick pre-assessment before our unit. The results, paired with what I knew of them as learners, gave me the info I needed to sort them into a low-medium-high kind of system. I always begin math by immediately pulling my first group. After we are done going over yesterday's Lesson Work, we delve into the lesson for the day.
Math Rotations: Lesson Work. There are lots of chevron color options for you to choose from (teal, blue, purple, gray, green, orange, and red) as well as a plain background.
Included are the posters you see below, each with a description underneath that still shows up beautifully if you wanted to make bookmarks (easy tutorial HERE). I don't use "Rotation One" or "Group 1" but I thought some of you might like that, so I included Rotation & Group 1-4 in each color as well... it's a huge file ;) Math Rotations: Math Centers. Warning: Information Overload!
I will have to say that Math Centers took me the longest out of any of these to wrap my head around, to practice with my kiddos, and the one that I am still working on perfecting. I will share what I have done so far, but please-pretty-please share your tips and strategies below!! If you're like me, my typical math class was set up with Teacher Time and Lesson Work, just in a whole-group setting, so making those more small-group oriented was easy and delightful! Math Centers were what always hung me up when it came to logistics, time management, work habits, building independence with my students, and on and on and on!! So, I decided when I was going to take the plunge into Math Rotations, to over-prep Math Centers to death, because I was pretty sure that if the wheels were going to come off the bus, it would be when kids were in this center.
The first thing I did was buy these lovely shelves from Joann's during one of their big sales with free shipping. Math Rotations: Fact Practice. Thanks for hanging with me on this Math Rotations Journey.
Although I am now describing the last "rotation"-ish, please know I have lots of extra posts I will be doing to follow-up on some of the ideas I have introduced. And, if you know me {which many of you do!} , you will also know I will be tweaking these along the way and sharing those new experiences, too.