Math Workshop: Stations and Small Group Instruction

With the help of one of my teammates, her knowledge from Math Workshop conferences, as well as my own scouring of blogs, I've thought through several station options. I only implement about 5 of these, but as this is my first year of Math Workshop, I expect to expand my horizons next year.

The options for stations are:

• Small Group Instruction
• Fact Fluency
• Technology
• Math Games
• Notebooking/Vocabulary
• Interdisciplinary
• Spiral Practice/Weak Standards

Great. Now what? Find the stuff for the centers. The quicker they are to acquire, the more likely you are to do them :) I started with what I had on hand. My stations look something like this:

Small Group Instruction- 4-5 students and I working with manipulatives, white boards, and having think alouds and problem solving discussions

Fact Fluency- flash cards, mad minute timed test (self check)

Technology- online leveled practice (Think Through Math, iStation Math) or discovering how to use an app and creating a tutorial to teach the concept we are working on

Math Games- our math adoption has math games at the beginning of every unit, or using a deck of cards, dice, dominos, interchange directions for games with similar rules (Addition War, Multiplication War, Place Value War, Race to Zero-subtraction races, Race to 1,000-addition races)

Notebooking/Vocabulary- instead of doing this whole group, have interactive notebooking as a station and plug in vocabulary activities to develop academic language

Interdisciplinary- Math calculations for a science lab

Spiral Practice- Mountain Math board or Lonestar Review/Daily Rigor

I have found I had to let go on some control in my stations, and let certain behaviors slide in order to free myself up to work with my small group. Don't get me wrong, rules are still in place. If a student or students are off task or misusing supplies, they lose the privilege of working together or the privilege of that station. So far this year, I've only had to do this 2-3 times. Not too shabby. Especially since a traditional teacher led lesson would have misbehavior or loss of attention anyways.

Now that I'm in small group and my kiddos are working in their respective stations, I try to level my lesson to the group. Some students have access to manipulatives. Some students are working in pairs, some groups work independently, some students write their own problems. The idea is to keep these stations at 15-20 minutes a rotation. This has been challenging for me, but I'm slowly getting better at it. I find my biggest mistake is trying to work too many problems, instead of using one or two challenging problems to talk about the skill conceptually and building problem solving strategies. 

I love Math Workshop for the flexibility it gives me. I can do a mini lesson and stations in one day, I can do only stations, I can do an extended problem solving session, etc. Its based on the needs of my kids and my schedule. I also have time to visit with each of my kids and really get a feel for their level of understanding. Most teachers I know say they spend a lot of time with their low performing students. If they have time, they might have an extension activity for their high performers. Usually the middle/average groups gets left out. By teaching through Math Workshop, I am giving challenging, engaging lessons that require participation the entire time from at least 50% of my students at any given point. I'm also getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of each of my kids. Pretty cool. 

So my colleague and I were given the opportunity to share our learning with our district at our February PD. Here is a link to the Google Slides presentation we used. 

Here is our handout packet that goes into more detail with a Q&A and links to blogs as well as books we used as resources during our learning journey.

I hope you try it. I hope you make a FAIL (First Attempt In Learning). Failure is the first step towards success!