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...