Schedules for Math Centers

hi i'm jamie from not so wimpy teacher and i'm in the middle of a video series all about how to teach math so if you haven't caught the other videos in the series you might want to start there my first video is all about what now workshop is the components of a good math workshop and then i did a video about the mini lesson the whole group lesson and i did video about the small group lesson today's video is about the scheduling of your math centers and your small groups it's about how many groups are you going to meet with each day and how long will you meet with them how will you keep this all organized okay so I hope this will be a nice quick video that will give you some ideas and if you need to modify these ideas to make them work in your classroom of course feel free to do so alright I've shown this slide a few times but just as a reminder these are the components of a good math workshop you're gonna start with your mini lesson which is done whole group this three are introducing a new skill or new vocabulary we're using our curriculum if we have any because we're not going to recreate the wheel it's not necessary we're adding in the engagement the differentiation through our small groups and our centers our small groups Center time is the biggest chunk of our math workshop time and then we have a small share at the end all right you need at least 60 minutes to do good math workshop you have 60 minutes you can do a 20 minute mini lesson 40 minutes for small groups and centers and then maybe you can squeeze a five minute share in some days and some days maybe you can't it's okay but it's important that your smugger times the big chunk I love to have a 90 minute buck and if you're lucky enough to have that then you can do a 30 minute whole group lesson with 60 minutes on the smoker and centers and the maybe you could squeeze a share in there I take that small group in center time and I split it into two rotations each day this was what changed my math centers and made them so successful prior to doing this I started with six groups and I meant with each of them for ten minutes a day it was chaotic it was not helpful to my students once he mixed in all of the different transitions I was really only meeting with students for like seven or eight minutes that wasn't long enough to use manipulatives and to dig deep into a problem like we discussed in our small group video so that didn't work it was a good try but it didn't work so it took four trips and I attempted to meet with each of them for 15 minutes a day of course with transitions this ended up being more like 12 maybe 13 and when they got really good with it but taking materials in and out getting what you needed I was really still only getting about 12 minutes with them it still felt too short we really were struggling to use our manipulatives to do an interactive notebook activity just to get through much and so I decided to try a different model it I kept the four groups I have a bigger class we talked about having three or four groups in yesterday's video so I kept the four groups but I only met with two of them each day this gave me 30 minutes added some transitions and it was maybe 27 to 28 minutes dead it was a lot less transition time since we only have a transition a couple of times this gave me so much more time to get out those manipulatives to get the whiteboards test students solve with the manipulatives draw a picture then solve with members and then even write their answer in complete sentences and explain why and how they know and how they can check we were digging in much deeper and I suddenly felt like I was helping my students and they were gonna grow some time only doing two rotations and I have four groups this doesn't mean that I don't meet with every group every day and this really scares some people they say but I have to teach a lesson every day my pacing guide says so I did teach a new lesson every day I always had a mini lesson and I moved ahead in our pacing guide with a new lesson every day when I met with my groups I was able to cover problems from both lessons because we had a significantly more time so I would just start off by giving him a problem from the day before a lot of my groups we're fine with that problem they know had two days they had many lesson on it and then they did a review that day during the mini lesson they they were already starting to get it my lower learners maybe not and so that's where we spent some more time and we didn't move forward until they were ready and your lower learners might not be ready to move forward and that's okay because that's the beauty of small group is being able to move at their pace without feeling guilty about holding back the whole class so this really works for me and that's why I wanted to share some schedules with you in case you want to try out this strategy all right so if you have four groups like I did this is ideal for larger classes I would say for twenty four and above you probably want to go ahead with four groups and this is kind of what my schedule would look like with the centers that I did I'll be discussing my center activities in my next video so I'm gonna kind of breeze through that but you can get an idea of how it worked Group one have the exact same centers every Monday and Wednesday and then every Tuesday and Thursday it was easy for students to remember so on Monday Group one would meet with me first then have technology they do the exact same thing on Wednesday meet with me then go to technology on Tuesdays and Thursdays they would start with their independent Center and then their math back Center very easy for them to remember only two rotations each day and they're getting to all of the rotations and they're actually spending just as much time even more time on their centers than if you did every rotation each day because there's less transitions Turner wasting last time Group two does pretty much the opposite of your what they have the exact seams and terms on Monday they just do them in reverse order first they go to technology then they come meet with me and smoger on Tuesdays they would first go to math facts and then have independent groups three and four they kind of they flip-flop about group one and two does on Mondays they actually do that on Tuesday so group three has independent starting off Monday mornings and math facts on Tuesdays and Thursdays they start with me and then technology so you can kind of get the gist and if you want you can go ahead and screenshot this in case it's a schedule and you might want to consider in yesterday's video I told you about how I kept track of who was in what group and what their centers were each day these posters were a freebie in my last video so you didn't catch that make sure you go back to the mountain small group video and grab these edible posters to help keep your groups organized okay this schedule was amazing for me and I kept it for multiple years because once I figured out how how much more we could accomplish with less transitions I never wanted to go back to meeting every group every day meeting with every group every day meant that every kid got a little less of me we doing it every other day it meant that they got more interaction and feedback from me and that made all the difference for my students some people say there's no the way my kids are gonna be able to do centers for twenty or thirty minutes on their own you'd be surprised with the right training and modeling what most students can accomplish if your ships can't do it right away at the beginning to be here it's something that you can work on and increasing their endurance and we'll talk about that in my video a couple more videos away okay alright so some of you I get this question a lot either you have a smaller class you don't necessarily need the four groups or you're required by our administration to meet with your lower learners every day so I have this schedule and if I could have done this schedule I would have my person is just a little too big for this to work out too well but if you have a smaller class this would be so ideal it looks a lot like before group but if you'll notice so group wanted to we meet the teacher and have technology on Mondays and Wednesdays and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays you have independent math facts okay okay look at group three they meet with the teacher on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then they have technology so if you look at Tuesday and Thursday in your schedule you're gonna have to meet with group three during the first rotation during the second rotation you do not have a group coming to meet with you every one of your groups is going into one of their centers either math that's independent or technology this means that you can do a couple of different things you could pull in a little group maybe they're the ones doing independent maybe you're low groups group two and they're the ones doing independent right now and you can pull them and help them through the independent centers that's one option you can also pull just a few students when you notice when you were meeting throughout the week they aren't even farther behind than some of the other groups you could just pull those couple of students to do a reteach maybe you have a child who's been absent block or just needs extra intervention maybe you have two or three kiddos who just needs a little bit extra you could pull those kiddos during your Tuesday and Thursday second rotation you can pull somebody who for any one of your groups really who just didn't understand a skill or has fallen behind in some way you could even pull some a your high kiddo some days and push them a little further with your extra time so it's just really neat if you have no group that you really have to pull one day you can walk around and assist observe assess but it's neat to have that little extra rotation where you can do what your students need you to do at that time it works fantastic for those teachers who say they need to work with their intervention kiddos every day you could pull them for a second rotation on Tuesday and Thursday I the man group - if it were me so this is another option I would do I would consider this maybe if I have like 21 kids if I you know I was a little bit of a smaller class but you might want to screenshot this that's another option how you can organize your your groups without meeting every group every day because that was a little chaotic for me so you find that to be a little chaotic for you - then maybe one of these schedules will help you to be more successful with your centers in your math workshop so tomorrow my next video will be uploaded and it's going to be all about these math Center activities I'm gonna tell you I already told you what I do don't meet the teacher but I'm going to tell you a little about what I did technology and dependent in math facts for my students I am going to show you how my centers do not require a weekly prep or teaching my students a whole bunch of new activities every week because I don't have time for that my math Center schedule so hope that you'll tune in to the next video see you then bye

Channel: Not So Wimpy Teacher

Views: 8,618

Rating: 4.8775511 out of 5

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Id: ZBiAB_BzZzM

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 26 2018