Doesn’t it drive you crazy when a casual conversation with a friend ends up being something you obsess over? Usually it’s a new pair of shoes or dreaming of going to a certain vacation place but in this case it was… (wait for it) MATH! 🙂 Not the typical type of thing you’d obsess over, but hey we’re teachers right?
Anywhoooo, Deedee and I were discussing the fact that we weren’t pleased with how our math block flowed. So, after many conversations we decided to create Math Workshop units that mirrored the flow of our Writer’s Workshop. We have only completed the first unit and we are really pleased with how it’s going. Each lesson has five components.
This part of the lesson is a warm up that will help our students build their fluency for various math skills. It will usually involve flash cards and the focus is on speed and accuracy.
One of the skills we are working on at this time is subitizing. Subitizing is the ability to instantly recognize the number of objects in a set without having to count. If you are interested in more information about subitizing there is a great article HERE
We introduce and model new concepts and skills through a mini lesson.
The teacher and students will work together as a group to actively explore the concept that was introduced..
The students will independently complete a task that will allow them to apply the new concepts that were taught.
This is our “math talk” time. It allows for the students to orally share with a partner and discuss what they learned.