Week 2 Math Stations: Number Sense

Well it only took me until the first full week of school to get sick this year...not a good sign! I remember my first year of teaching I was literally sick every 2 weeks. It was awful. I guess I'm going to have to be a little more religious about washing my hands. Anyways, things are clicking along in my classroom. We are all getting to know each other better and with that new sense of comfort comes a few instances of pushing the limits. As I enter my fourth year in my current district, I have come to learn that as students warm up, their true behaviors and personalities come out. Managing behavior is the most frustrating and rewarding part of my job. Needless to say I have created a few behavior checklists so far this week and spent my Friday making phone calls to explain them to parents and get them on board. Sometimes I feel like I could use another teacher in my classroom just to handle behavior related issues. It's a lot of work, but it is so necessary. 

As I continue to manage behavior and reinforce expectations, I thought I would share some of our number sense math stations. Our grade level relies heavily on Teaching Student-Centered Mathematics by John Van de Walle and LouAnn Lovin. It is the text that my math professor used at JMU and not only explains the math concepts (K-3) but also provides excellent station ideas and black line masters. It is one of my top 3 most consulted teaching books. Some of these ideas came from this book and many of them come from a colleague who is a talented math teacher. We are working on reviewing kindergarten concepts and number sense for the first 3 weeks of school. Since the kids just need to practice this skill, we have been spending a lot of time learning stations and practicing them.

{Station # 1: Missing Number Cards} In this station the students fill in the missing number. Some of the cards have a number missing at the end. Others have a number missing in the middle, like 72, ___, 74. These are fairly easy because the students have 2 numbers to refer to. The hardest type of card in this station is when the number is missing in the first box, like ___, 68, 69. We are currently working on the terms right before and right after to help students understand how numbers work. If necessary, students can use a hundreds chart to help them figure out the missing number.

{Station # 2: Calendar Station} Calendar station is going to be a regular station in our classroom. Right now my students are working on the months of the year and days of the week. They can sing the Days of the Week song until your ears start to bleed, but when asked to sort them vs. the months, things start to break down. I don't have a picture of this, but this station also has cards that say "If today is Monday, tomorrow will be _______.,  If today is Wednesday, yesterday was _____."

{Station # 3: Tens Frames War} In this station, students play the traditional game of war. With the students we call it "Compare." They each get a pile of tens frame cards, count to three then flip a card over. After they compare the two cards, whoever has the higher card gets to take both cards in their pile. These black line master are from Van de Walle/Lovin's book. This helps students master the concepts of "more," "less," and "same." Van de Walle points out that the concept of "less" is more difficult for students to grasp, perhaps because students given more opportunities to use the idea of "more" in everyday life (pg. 38). A good question to ask in this station is "why do you think this set has less." Students will start to see the relationship between sets of numbers on a ten frame and develop math talk skills.

{Station # 4: Hundreds Chart Sticker Charts} There is not a concise name for this station! Basically we took blank hundreds charts, filled them with different numbers of bingo stamps, checks or stickers, and then wrote the number on the back. Students can either play Compare or practice counting and checking themselves. Although students probably don't have an understanding of tens and ones, they are being exposed to how numbers to 100 are sequenced. Van de Walle states, "Most important at this early level is for students to become familiar with the counting patterns to 100" (pg. 57). A lot of our number sense activities include the hundreds chart.

{Station # 5: Patterns on the Hundreds Chart} This picture doesn't do this station justice...so let me explain! Students were given counters to practice counting a collection of objects. After they counted it, there were supposed to find the number on the hundreds chart. However, these 2 students were using their inquiry brains and started having a discussion about patterns on the hundreds chart. The student on the right noticed that the numbers on the left side all ended in 1 and decided to mark those numbers with counters. The student on the left side of the picture was starting to recognize the patterns in a row vs. a column. Here are some patterns Van de Walle highlights (I like the language he uses):

• The numbers in a column all end with the same number, which is the same number at the top
• In a row, one number "counts" (the ones digit goes 1, 2, 3 ...); the first number (tens digit) stays the same
• In a column, the first number (tens digit) "counts" or goes up by ones

There is SO much you can do with number sense in math stations. I have eight stations, 2-3 students at each station and we spend about 12-15 minutes in each station. Students go to two stations a day. Many of these activities will remain in my station rotation for many weeks, until I feel students have mastered them. In addition, a lot of these activities are things that I will do with a small group of students at the teaching table. It gives students who may be struggling with a concept time to practice in front of me and then independently in their station.  I know math stations can be a daunting task, but once you get them set up your math time should run nice and smooth!

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!

Under the Sea Unit

With just 2 more full weeks of school, I am determined to keep our schedule consistent while planning some fun activities that we finally have time to do. I loved the under the sea painting that Really Roper shared. This will definitely be one of our art activities this week.

Here is a math station game I just finished making for our Under the Sea unit. We are going to review time in math because we need more practice! I have some activities in the "Time" math station basket that are harder (i.e. they work on telling time in 5 minute increments), but my students who are struggling need to practice time to the hour and half hour... click below for the game!

Debbie Diller's Math Stations Blog Party

I was so excited to come across the blog party about Debbie Diller's new book on math stations. As we wind down and come to the end of this school year, I am ready to purge and organize. I have tried out a few new ideas (i.e. a new way of organizing my magnetic word wall so it is more accessible), and I think this is a great time to think about how I want to organize my math stations next year.

I am definitely going to keep my system of managing math stations. This worked great; however I may add some pictures to the numbers so that students have a clearer idea of which concept they are working on at each station.  I also found that I can have no more than 2-3 students per station.

I can't wait to start organizing manipulatives and mapping out a better way to allow students to have some freedom in what they are working on in math stations.

Tomorrow I will take pictures of our duckling unit...complete with baby ducklings! This week we are working on reading and comparing The Little Red Hen stories. Hopefully I will have some printables and pictures to share soon!

Updated Math Centers - Keep It Simple!

This week was very long! We had parent teacher conferences and then the rest of the day today to work in our rooms, so I am actually ahead of schedule for a second. AND today I set up our new smart board in our room. I can't wait to use it next week. I think this might be exactly what we all need in my room. Our routine needs some spicing up, so I hope the smart board will help!

Anyways, I rethought my math stations in an effort to accommodate the 2 new students I have recently received. I find that with the size of my room I can only have 3 students in each station. With our new additions, I had 2 groups of 4 and it was getting way to loud for me to focus and get work done with my small group. I am trying to work on my "productive noise" tolerance.

Here is what my station board looks like now:

The students go to 2 stations for 15-20 minutes. I have 8 stations, a change from my previous 6. I organize each station in colored baskets from Really Good Stuff. The color of the basket corresponds to the color of the number on the station board. This was a huge life-savor at the beginning of the year when my first graders were trying to figure out how to rotate during math stations.

It's kind of hard to tell in the picture below, but I have different baskets pertaining to the major math concepts in first grade. I have file folder games, flash cards and other follow the path games that I have made or bought. Here is a quick look at what is in each basket now:

# 1: Not pictured here, but the first station is the overhead projector. Currently the students can work on counting overhead coins, or tens and ones sticks. I have recording sheets for them to show me what they worked on.
#2: Pattern Blocks - cards with pictures/patterns to make
#3: Addition Station - flash cards, part-part-whole chinet plates, counters
#4: Money Station - board game, flashcards, shopping game
#5: Place Value - Who Has It, tens and ones sticks, place value mats
#6: Computers
#7: Fractions - equal/not equal sort, fraction memory, fraction fish
#8: Subtraction - flashcards, counters, number lines, Acorn Subtraction game

It worked great this week and the best part is it takes students several days to get to each station, so I don't feel like I have to constantly be changing the contents of the baskets.

Each student has a station folder where they keep recording sheets that they have worked on during stations. I check the folders periodically to make sure that work is actually getting done in stations. I love the folder system and it helps hold my students accountable for their actions during stations. I am going to post some of my math station recording sheets soon!

Favorite Things that Worked This Week

One of my purposes for writing this blog is to keep a running record of things that worked in my room and things that I need to keep thinking about. This week I capitalized on Valentine's Day and made heart Elkonian boxes to use in my guided reading groups. We started with the hearts in the boxes and then pushed them up into the hearts for each sound. I used clip art from DJ Inkers and found the heart vase fillers in the dollar spot at Target. It was amazing how much my first graders wanted to get their little fingers on those purple hearts! I told them if they were not listening and following the directions then they would get the regular chips instead of the hearts ... needless to say they sat right up in their seats and started their warm up read!

The second successful project for this week actually came from one of my fellow first grade teachers. Although our district uses the HM math series, our grade level regularly consults Teaching Student Centered Mathematics (K-3) by John Van De Walle. We are currently working on money in small math groups, but we are always trying to find ways to provide our students with a strong number sense foundation. This week we introduced these cards and then later moved them into a math station.

At first the cards looked daunting and I was even a little skeptical about using them, but the thinking was that if we strengthen our students' mixed skip counting skills then it would be easier to count a mixed group of coins (dimes, nickels, pennies). Van de Walle points out how abstract counting money is and that it is hard for students to make sense of why each coin is worth an arbitrary amount.

The front of the card looks like this. I taught my class that when you see a 10 you count by tens and then when the numbers switch you have to count on by ones. The last number you say is the answer. So for this card you would count "10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74."

Then they flip the card over to check the answer. I also put out a game board with these cards so when the students get the right answer they move their piece up one spot on the gameboard.

Not only did the students get it, but they thought it was challenging and thus when they got the answer right they were hooked. I am not sure how effective this game will be in helping students count money because we have not assessed counting with mixed coins yet, but I am hoping to see a difference!