For the first 3 1/2 years of my teaching career, the idea of Math Centers, or Math Rotations, simultaneously appealed to and confounded me. Pinterest and Instagram dangled promising images of beautifully crafted, color coordinated bins full of engaging activities, in addition to very complex looking bulletin boards with a dizzying amount of groups and rotations per day.
Reality Hits Hard
You can imagine (or maybe you don’t have to, because you’ve experienced) my epic disappointment when year after year, I crashed and burned. I could never utilize my time well because EVERY math center needed teacher direction at some point, and my math block was never long enough to accommodate the requirements of any rotation/center option I found.
My toddler solved the problem for me! Well, metaphorically speaking. I was trying to jam the square peg into the round hole. All these other Math Center rotation ideas were created for classrooms that were not like mine, so I needed to develop a method that worked for MY students in MY setting!
Making it Work for ME!
Thus, My Math Workshop was born! This has been the only method that really allowed me to pull students when needed, not worry about managing other centers, and minimize the amount of graded work.
As other teachers asked me about how I utilized centers in my math block, I realized that this could be an extremely versatile approach to teaching math while giving a single teacher the ability to reach a wider range of students and abilities within their allotted math time.
Join Me!
In this course, I will share how to implement this method into your classroom no matter where you are in your teaching journey or school year. The entire process of implementation will take 1-2 week, and I will provide resources that I have used to help you set it up as quickly and easily as possible. As you use this method in your own classroom, you will most likely want to change some aspects to match your specific population (that’s the point!), and that will be very easy once you get the hang of it! I have included enough materials to help you begin the process and some editable forms as well to help you personalize and tailor this method to your own classroom.
Enjoy!
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to implement?
Using the course as designed, it will take about 2 weeks to fully implement. The first part of this course is dedicated to preparing your classroom for a workshop-style block. Given the current conditions of your classroom, you may not need that much time to get started!
Teaching the Method to your students is laid out in 5 days, so this can take as little as a week to transform your Math Instruction!
What’s Included?
- Four self-paced modules outlining the method, behavior management, implementation, and exploding with ideas as you make this your own!
- Workbook to accompany the modules to help you track your own progress and prepare/teach your class!
- Exit Tickets for your students as you teach the method- aligned with Module 2
- Main Menu Poster, Expectations Poster (both editable with examples)
- Center Posters for marking completion (explained in the course)
- A 9 week set of Math Facts Center (Upper Elementary) with Answer Key, print version AND Online self-grading version!
- Six week set of Spiral Review (Upper Elementary) with Answer Keys and Cumulative Review Quiz
- Data Tracking Sheets
- A feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction with your new and improved math block! 🙂
I’ve seen similar stuff in the past—what makes this different?
As I discussed above, most math center rotations are complex and require that you have more than 1 hour to teach math. I did not have that kind of time. Additionally, my inclusion classroom contains such a wide range of abilities that I found it nearly impossible to meet all needs and keep everyone/everything managed.
This method allows me to meet with those who need it, encourage (and manage) independence, and challenge higher-level thinkers all within the course of one math block.
Basically, this method is a pre-planned template that once you adapt the formula to your class needs, almost plans itself!
What if I don’t have much time to spend on creating a new system right now?
The course can be completed in a weekend and you do not need to create/ purchase anything additional to make it work for you! You can potentially use everything you already have to implement this method! The resources I included work for upper-elementary but can be amended to fit primary.
The idea of this method, however, is to truly use what you have in a different way!
Will it be a good fit for my class?
In short, yes!
The point is to provide you with a detailed template and the skeleton plans of the overall method and goal. After that, you simply plug in what your classroom needs!
If you like what I have created, you have all the resources I already use in my room at your fingertips. If you do have different needs or age groups to cater to, by the end of the course you will have the basic structure in place to plug in what you need!
Additional Questions? No problem! Shoot me an e-mail at ashley.firstbelle@gmail.com! Or, take a look around the course at:
