My favorite part of teaching is meeting with my small groups! For me, it is an excellent time to work closely with my students, catch their mistakes before they become habits, and really customize my teaching to fit their individual needs. Small groups can be magical! Well, that is if the rest of your class isn’t running up the walls! After years of setting up my math centers (Math Workshop), I learned some strategies that have helped me be successful. Here are some tips that will help you have a great start with center time and keep your math centers going strong all year long.
1. Keep It Real
When creating your daily center schedule, keep it real! That’s right! Don’t set yourself up for failure by trying to fit too much into a short period of time.
- First, figure out how much time you have.
- Next, decide how long you would like each rotation to be.
- Then, figure out how many rotations you will be able to have each day.
- Finally, add in a few extra minutes between each rotation for transition time. This is your “realistic” schedule!
Here is what my schedule looks like. I will tell you that my schedule is not like most teachers’ schedules. I prefer to teach 100% in small groups, and I had 90 minutes for my math block. In this schedule, you will notice that I had 4 rotations and met with all four groups each day.
2. Pick Activities That Count!
It doesn’t matter how awesome your schedule is if you don’t have the activities to back it up! This is the time to think about what type of activities you want to include in your daily math center routine. Here is a list of centers that I LOVED using in my classroom:
- Math Game – any game that covers the current skill we are working on.
- Review Game – any game that covers a skill we have already learned.
- Calendar Math – You can learn more about calendar math if you don’t know what it is.
- Technology – some type of program or website that my students can work on to sharpen their skills. I love to incorporate the smart board here as well.
- Problem Solving – an extensive word problem that requires my students to use a graphic organizer to plan out their strategy and explain their thinking.
- Small Group – of course, the group that meets with me for the daily lesson.
This is what my schedule looks like with the centers filled in.
Be sure to download all of my FREE math resources!
3. Be Prepared!
I have found that the more I prepare for math centers at the beginning of the year, the more successful they are, and the more likely I am to actually do them. One way to prepare is to pull together a collection of math games and get them ready for use. This process can take some time, but once you are done, you are set for the year!
- First, think about each standard or skill you teach. I like to make a list of the major concepts I know I will be covering.
- Next, start scouring the internet, the filing cabinets, or even other teachers’ classrooms to find some games you can use for each skill. You will want to have maybe 2-3 different games for each concept.
- Finally, once you have the games printed and gathered, put them together so that they are ready to use. Some games may require dice, a deck of cards, fraction bars, etc., while other games may require cutting, laminating, sorting, etc. No matter what the game requires, be sure to get it all done now, so you don’t have to worry about it later.
The good news is, once you are done prepping your games, all you have to do is change them out once a week. Simple!
Choose On-Level Activities
Just like in reading, every student has a different math level. One problem I noticed while conducting math centers in my own classroom was that if a student didn’t understand the center activity, they didn’t do it. If a student is not doing their assigned activity, they are wasting their own learning time and probably the learning time of their friends nearby.
To solve this problem, I spent lots of time finding and collecting quality games that gave me the option to differentiate. These types of games made it easy to accommodate the different levels within my classroom. I also made sure I prepared them ahead of time so that all I had to do was pull a game out of my cabinet. Boom, differentiated centers in seconds! With my I CAN math games, I was able to use two different formats of the same game to accommodate my students: multiple choice and short answer.
4. Set Your Expectations!
This is super important! Don’t rush to start math centers. Make sure you explain and teach your expectations and routines during the first few weeks of school. I typically spend the first week or two teaching my students how to complete the games and activities. Then I move forward and set my “rules.” Once I feel my students fully understand my expectations, I do a few days (more if needed) of “mock centers.” During this time I do not teach in small groups. Instead, I simply walk around and observe my students. This process sets the standard for this time of the day and lets my students know how important it is to me.
Things you may want to consider while developing your expectations:
- How do you want your students to transition between rotations?
- When and how will your students choose partners?
- What do you want students to do if they finish a center early?
- What noise level do you prefer? (Try to remember that noise can be a good thing.)
- How will you organize your materials, and where can students find each center activity?
- How should students handle materials and manipulatives, and where should they put them when the time is over?
- How should students get their questions answered without interrupting your small group?
Once your students fully understand your expectations, your math centers will run like a well-oiled machine!
5. Be Flexible!
We know as teachers, things do not always go according to schedule. Fire drills, assemblies, and other scheduled time outside the classroom can all get in the way of your center time. Try your best to be consistent, but don’t stress if things don’t go as planned. Tomorrow is another day, and another opportunity to try again.
Also, pay attention to whether your schedule is working! Don’t be afraid to change it.
How to Maximize Math Centers
A teacher’s time is valuable, and so is his or her students’. One of the largest complaints among teachers is that they don’t feel they have enough time to REALLY teach the required curriculum. This is the exact reason I became so passionate about finding ways to maximize my students’ learning time. Some of my ideas worked, and some I would prefer not to mention! I first shared these ideas as a guest blogger on the Teachers Pay Teachers blog. Here are a few ways I made sure my math centers were working for me, instead of me working for my centers.
- Use center time for required programs. My school required all students to use specific math computer programs each week. Instead of lining up my students and taking that long walk to the computer lab (#wasteoftime), I signed up for the laptop/tablet cart at my school. My students would use one of their math centers each week to work on our school math program. Such a great time saver! Be sure to have a good routine in place if you’re going to use electronics, or they could become a “time-taker” instead of a “time-saver.”
- Collect center work as grades. At times, gathering grades can be a tough task. For this reason, I collected two of my weekly center activities as grades. Not only did this help me out, but it taught my students that their work during center time was important.
- Turn a center into progress monitoring. Progress monitoring always took a lot of my teaching time. To solve this problem, I decided to turn my I CAN math games into a tool I could use to assess a student’s progress. What I loved about this idea was that I was able to turn the task of progress monitoring into something students enjoyed.
I hope some of these tips work for you and help you be successful this year with your math centers! If you are looking for a math curriculum that includes EVERYTHING you need to teach math, check out my Simplified Math Curriculum!
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