Educational XD XD

The organization and planning/prepping that comes with math rotations can sometimes feel daunting, so today I'm going to share with you a few different ways I plan my math rotations every year. If you're just diving into math rotations for the first time, I suggest choosing starting with only three rotations (two centers and one for teacher table). I've found it easiest to split my class into three groups (low, medium, and high levels). I have done this in primary grades AND when I taught 6th grade math. I am all about keeping it simple. As you can see on my cart, I just label my centers #1-5. The bottom half of my cart is for ELA. My math rotations are very simple: teacher table, math center/game from one of the drawers, and math practice on iPads. One year I tried doing interactive notebooks with my kiddos, and it just wasn't working for us. Students couldn't do them independently, and I felt like they spent a lot of time cutting and gluing. Don't get me wrong...

As a primary teacher, I LOVED math centers. I love that I can meet with small groups while all of my other students were engaged in center activities and games. However, as I'm sure many of you can relate, when I prepped my centers for each week, it became very clear to me that some of my students would NOT be capable of doing the on level center activity. Now, while you're probably thinking, just give them a different center,  I couldn't do it. Seriously, there's always one or two centers that seem to be the highlight, and other students can't WAIT until they get to play it... until they don't... because I gave them a higher or lower leveled center. AND THAT'S THE PROBLEM!   I LOVE that my students LOVE math centers, and the last thing I want to do is kill their enjoyment because they're missing out on an activity some of their friends got to do. When your friends are doing an activity that's cool, you want the chance to do it, too! So that's wh...

I've had a few questions on how I manage a 1st/2nd split with math, and I thought I'd take a quick post to share with you! By no means do I have it all figured out... It's taken A LOT of trial and error and conversations with my coworkers. I'm thankful for the awesome people I get to work with who are invested in helping each other! My class is made up of high-level first graders and average-level second graders. My first graders are smarties. No joke. Seriously, it's been SO fun to be their teacher. They catch on to new material so quickly! They're very high readers, so differentiating for my class in reading isn't bad at all. However, math is a different story. As I'm sure many of you know, first grade and second grade math is crucial. My firsties are bright, but in no way are they ready for 2nd grade math.  My math block this year looks a bit like this: When my class was set-up, the big factor we needed to figure out was, "How the heck should we ...