Math Tip Monday - Back to School Math Ideas

Today I'm linking up with K's Classroom Kreations and Theresa's Teaching Tidbits for Math Tip Monday. This post is all about Back to School Math Ideas!

These past few years I've found so many great ideas from blogs, and I really had to rack my brain to find something to write about for this post. I even started to wonder.. I found so many great ideas, how can I even compete with what is already out there? 

Well..

After a quick visit to my classroom I found a few ideas that have really helped me out these past few years, and I hope that you'll find them useful, too! 

1. Math workbooks

We do not have consumable math books. Why, I have no idea. It was a huge struggle trying to manage all the copying and storage of what seemed like a random assortment of worksheets. Because.. it WAS a random assortment of worksheets. I felt like I was constantly passing out papers and the students were constantly shoving them in their desks, losing them, turning them into paper airplanes, crumbling them up, cutting them into pieces, and basically anything expect what they were supposed to be doing with them! It drove me insane! #teachersunderstand

Well, I wasn't going to do that again my 2nd year with this curriculum. Once I was more familiar with it I would copy all of the papers I would need from the unit at once and copy them into a workbook. I was able to pick and choose which worksheets I would need, which would be journal activities, which could be done as a center, etc. It worked out SO much better. 

My curriculum will sometimes bounce around from topic to topic, so the main focus may be counting, but there are other topics within that topic that are sometimes not related. We pull those out and put them into a separate workbook. So there might be a counting workbook, a money workbook, and a time workbook that the students are working on. It is easier for me to keep the skills separated so that my lessons are more focused.

Side note - I realized that I needed to create separate workbooks AFTER this first one. Needless to say I will be revising this workbook this week!

These workbooks are just packets with a double staple on the side. They stayed at school in their math folders, and homework was sent home separately. I had very few students lose the workbooks since it was much harder to lose a workbook instead of just one piece of paper. I think they would have lost a "packet" but not a "workbook" because it sounds more official!




2. Center Bags

Oh, centers. It took me the longest time to figure out how to manage this. I needed a system that would work for me and I kept trying out different things, and finally last year I found something that worked for me.

The prep of centers is the hardest part for me. Once I get busy with the hustle and bustle of the school year I have the hardest time constantly gathering supplies and organizing centers. Eventually I realized that most of the centers I have use similar materials and I was constantly emptying out the materials from one bag and dumping them into another. I needed to work smarter and not harder and from that idea came center bags!

The center bag is a supply bag that I had in my classroom, and I put all of the materials that are constantly used in math centers in them. The students know they probably won't need all of the materials in the center bag, but it's there just in case they do. I have also heard of other teachers who have the students keep one set of the center or math materials in a box in their desks so they can pull them out quickly when needed. I try to keep the amount of things in my students' desks to a minimum, so that doesn't work for me, but it's just a different spin on a center bag. The picture below is a peek into what I have in my center bags. 

Included in the bags are:

1. 2 different color wet erase markers

2. Tens frames

3, Bag of money

4. 2 Dice

5. Unifix cubes

6. Base ten blocks

7. (Not pictured) Bag of number cards - I think I must have put the number cards in the bag with the center materials so I will need to put a bag of number cards back in the center bag.. just in case. 

When we were working on centers my students would go and pick up a center bag for the materials they needed. There was a designated spot for all the center bags by my math centers where I stored the bags. 

I use a lot of centers that come with my math curriculum, and the center bags are aligned to those games. I have some other centers and activities that might require something from a center bag, so if a student needed anything they would just go and pick up a center bag. They never had to ask me about it and I never had to find the materials for them. It keeps your prep to a minimum since you only have to prepare them at the beginning of the year.  I just wish I had that figured out my first year!! 

3. Math Focus Wall/Word Wall

I love my math focus wall, but I hate these pictures! It is missing a few things that I will add this week so please bear with me while I describe how I have it set up. 

The whole focus wall

Here is a photo of the whole focus wall. You probably noticed that there are a lot of blank spots, and that is where I put the anchor charts that we create as a class. I create new ones each year with my students so that it is more meaningful to them, but I happened to find two laying around in my room. I put them up so you can get an idea of what it looks like when the anchor charts are up. I will put up one or two more next to the money anchor charts at the top and possibly another one below the money anchor chart on the right. The space below the hundred chart is where I put up a poster that tracks the mastery of math facts, but I haven't got one yet. 

The hundred chart is a tool that we use frequently in math so I want it in a spot where the students can clearly see it, and have easy access to it if need be. I have the days of the week to the right of the hundred chart, and the calendar to the right of that. Below the calendar you'll notice I have a light blue pocket chart, which matches the background near perfectly! #ilovethetargetdollarspot

I used push pins to mount a small white board to the math wall, which has multiple uses. We use it to solve equations for the coin counter, write a message, work out other problems, etc. It saves me time from running back and forth between the math wall and the main white board. I had smaller plastic holders attached to the wall to display coins in the coin counter, but those kept falling off the wall and wasting precious minutes of math time so I realized I needed to change it this year. I used zip top quart bags, and I had my students set them up at the end of the year. Overall they did a good job, but I am going to move the last one on the bottom to the main row. It just doesn't look right to me. At least it'll be a simple fix!

Side note - Those clothes pins will be used to hold anchor charts in other areas of the math wall, but I didn't get a chance to move them yet. This isn't related to math, but it will make your life SO much easier.. hot glue a push pin to the back of a clothes pin to hang up your anchor charts. It is to easy to put them up and take them down!! 

Here's a better picture of the calendar area. Below the calendar I have two pocket charts, which I am going to use as a math word wall. We write a lot in math to explain our thinking or strategy, journal entries, questions, etc. and the students need help spelling math words. It will also hold vocabulary words that we might not have on an anchor chart that they still need to remember. 

I am SO excited about this new addition to my math focus wall for two reasons: 

1. I will no longer have to spell  (or help them sound out) the word equation for my students multiple times a day. They can simply look at the math word wall and find it instead!

2. I got these pocket charts from the Target dollar spot. YAY! 

These are examples of a student created anchor charts. I made both of these anchor charts within the first month of school last year, and I think they held up pretty good! 

I make all of my anchor charts with my students. I might prefill in some information to save time during instruction, but the majority of the chart is constructed with student input. I have an idea of what I want the chart to look like and the information I want in it so I pick and choose their responses and reword as necessary. My anchor charts aren't always super cute and "pinworthy" but they are functional. Sometimes if I get lucky they'll be cute AND functional!

Make sure you check out the other blog posts for Math Tip Monday! I know I'll be taking notes of the other fabulous ideas out there!