Math Work Stations: Ch. 1 and 2

Hi! I'm glad to be joining up with the Math Work Stations Blog Party! I am excited to be thinking about how I "do" math in my first grade classroom. I'm looking forward to having the chance to make math more meaningful to my little ones!


Chapter 1
Unfortunately, I have not been doing work stations at all. I have had math centers but even they were only visited when we had time.


1. Materials used by the teacher first, then placed in the station: No
2. Materials do not change weekly, but rather changed to reflect the students learning objectives: No...not really...I don't change the materials weekly, but I have a mix of review of skills and math games we have learned. I definately need to work on the planning of this. 
3. All students go to stations daily: No
4. Materials are differentiated: Nope
5. The teacher observes work or meets with differentiated math groups: No, but I am going to start this coming school year! And I'm excited to learn how!


Chapter 2: Organize


I have just recently sorted and purged my math materials. So my next step is going to be to organize them into concepts and figure out how I am going to store them.

Here's my before picture. The wooden shelves are usually full of clear plastic containers with manipulatives. (They are currently being used for summer school.) But the containers are not labeled. So that is one of the things I will have to do. The colorful shelves are where my centers have been. My plan is to buy drawers and change these to work stations. 


So... I am excited for a couple of reasons. I am looking forward to having a clearer focus for math. I feel like I've been doing well, my kids learn...but I know I can do better and I sure would like for it to be fun! Also, this is technically my first blog post, so YAY!