Mrs. Bentin's Blackboard: #MyMathJourney

Oh Sunday....

How I both love and hate you.

I don't know about you

but lately I feel like my weekends

are so packed, that Sunday becomes

a mad dash to get everything done that needs to get done.

I'm linking up with Jennifer from Mrs. Laffin's Laughings

for A Peek at my Week! :)

I'm trying to stay on top of things for this next week----

and that starts with #MyMathJourney

Recently my district has adopted Math Expressions.

I'm in year 2 right now.

The process for me is slow.

It has taken some time for me to get used to teaching differently---

but I've seen great progress with kids so I'm excited!

There's so much to get in and teach

that the majority of my math block has been whole group instruction. (ICK)

This year I have a very large divide in math skills

that my students possess

as we start learning the concept of multiplication,

and whole group all of the time....

well....

it just isn't working.

So after so much blog stalking....

(here are two that I keep going back to for help)

and TpT purchases....

I'm gong to try to run things just a bit different this next week.

Math Plans- I plan to run both whole group and small group instruction this next week in math. I will utilize our math intervention time to work with small groups of students that needs some extra help. While I do that I also have on-level and enrichment activities to both practice the current skill that we're learning in class and also topics that we've already done to spiral them back. It's a very large work in progress but here's a small overview and what I hope will happen.

Mini-Lesson: We will discuss the topic of the day for each day at the beginning of the math block. After that, I will send my higher level students off to do some independent work on the topic just taught, and I will then work with small groups of students who will need more instruction. When its time to rotate I will send my small group to do some independent work and continue. Students who aren't working with me will work on the following:

1. Independent Work (work that covers our topic being taught right now)

2. Fact Practice- This will consist of a computer website this week, but will change as the weeks go on to practice facts in different ways. This week we will do digit whiz. If you haven't used it yet, I recommend that you check it out. Kids LOVE it! And, it's free, so what could be better?

3. Centers- This is an activity that students will work on if they finish up their independent work early. They will be different each day. Some days will be extra work on our current skill, other days it may be a math journal or a skill that we are spiraling. Activities include partner work, games, or writing.

4. Small Group- This will be with me for additional teaching and practice. I will also then cycle around the room as students work on independent work to check in.

The end of the math block will end with a closing/ mini-lesson as well so we can do a small formative assessment. This way I can see where we are from today and decide what we will move forward with as the next day approaches.

Due to the length of this post already, I'm just going to leave math at that. Next week I'll share more in-depth on how it will look as I have a week under my belt and can talk more about the actual teaching going on and the concepts being taught!

Reading- Small groups are starting this week as my students are all trained in Daily 5 and area ready to go. I'll be working with small groups on story elements (a review) and comparing and contrasting. We will be using the story: The Three Little Pigs to help us do that. Based off of book levels, different groups will get different stories. We will be making Venn-diagrams to compare stories as the week goes on and then sharing the different versions that we read with each other. Some of the books that I will be using are: (click each picture to go to amazon)