Quick and Easy Math Station

This is going to be a quick post as I seem to have finally caught germs from the kids...surviving the ongoing attack of germs until January is pretty good if you ask me! Today we read Ten on a Sled by Kim Norman. This book incorporates backwards counting, as each animal falls off the sled. My students are working on addition and subtraction story problems, so as we read each page we discussed whether we were combining two groups, or taking part away from the whole group. This was a great way to use the vocabulary words associated with addition and subtraction. Together as a class we wrote the addition or subtraction equation for each page on a sentence strip. {If I were to do this again I may share the pen and let students write the problems.} Next, I laminated the problems and cut them apart.

Tomorrow I plan on putting this into a math work station and letting the students match the number sentence with the page. I'm also working on a recording sheet to go with this station. I like this activity because it is hard to put word problems in stations since it requires students to be able to read the problem, which can be tricky. We've read this book enough times that students are familiar with the language already. And, it took about 10 minutes to create with the kids and 5 minutes after school to laminate...quick and easy and I won't feel bad about tossing the cards when we're done!