Our state testing is rapidly approaching! My fourth graders will take their math MCAS
right in the middle of Teacher Appreciation Week. Sad, but true, so what else can I do? Pretend I didn't realize/care to my kids, whine
to my colleagues, and have my fun this week instead with some of their favorite
math review centers!

Then one year I had another idea to really
motivate the kids and keep the centers from feeling stale. I asked the other fourth grade teacher in my
building what he planned to do for review, and when he said with a sigh,
"just keep going over old MCAS tests," I asked if he'd like to join
forces! My idea was to "mix
up" the classes, and have half of his class come to my room, half of my
class go to his, and have a mix of half and half in each activity station. Being the epitome of easy-going, he said
sure!
We decided to have a nice long block of time, since kids
would have a new environment, half of them would be learning a new activity
(Mr. E. had his own favorite fraction activities that differed from my usuals)
and there would be a whole new group dynamic trying to work cooperatively with
kids they hadn't worked with in nearly a year. We also decided on only having kids visit 2
stations in that time so that they got a taste of transitioning (and nearly all
could have a chance to visit the "other" teacher's room) but they
didn't feel too rushed and frustrated to have to leave an activity just when
they were getting the hang of it. So we
settled on 45 minutes on the first activity (since it would include some
introduction time) and 30 minutes on the second activity, with 5 or 10 at the
end to debrief and clean up before lunch.

Once he got me a copy of the finalized roster, I wrote the 7
centers on the board (sorry no photo of this) and a piece of colored
construction paper got taped under each.
I copied the 6 names for each center underneath, then flipped the papers
over and wrote the next six names on the back.
This way once we were ready to switch groups, it was as easy as flipping
over 7 papers. It went pretty
easily! They did have to pack up and
bring their centers into the other room at the end of the first session (to
help everyone get their change of scenery) but that also ensured couldn't blame
any mess on the previous session, since they had to have everything they needed
in order to play for the half hour, hehe.






Hi Amber!
ReplyDeleteThis is very cool idea about mix up the students and teach them Maths sums in different ways. Children take more interest in learning Maths with the help of this method. I have read somewhere that the Singapore’s method of teaching math is very effective. That's why I follow Singapore's method for teaching Maths to my students.