Math Workshop and Explore Time - Follow Up

Math Workshop ~ Follow Up
I thought that I should do just a bit more follow up on how a couple of things that I tried this year went. I wrote about wanting to change my math time into a math workshop time that would be similar to a reader's workshop or writer's workshop here. Then I followed that up with another post on how things were going here. Things have not changed too much since that last post. I did add one more day a week where I veered from the regular Everyday Math curriculum and went more in-depth on a topic or taught it in a different way.

The year ended up with my math block having three days of regular Everyday Math curriculum and content, one day of Math Exchanges and one day of Math Extensions. I am pretty happy with how this worked out. We still "covered" all of the Everyday Math curriculum for first grade but we added so much more - deeper thinking, collaboration on solving problems and looking at problems in various ways to solve them. At this point, I plan to follow the same format next year. We will start the year with Everyday Math curriculum every day and then about mid-year, we will begin to add in Math Exchanges and Math Extensions. I love how my students responded to the challenges of Math Exchanges and Math Extensions. We were all better mathematicians because of it.

Explore Time ~ Follow Up
Another big idea that I wanted to try this year was Explore Time. I wrote about that here. I did manage to have one Explore Time this year  and it went very well but after that, it was just too difficult to find the time. At my school we have so many wonderful "extras" that we do that our days are just packed. Some of these "extras" include Expeditionary Learning, drumming circles, portfolios, Adventure Education, overnight Voyages, All School Meetings, Morning Meetings, Closing Circles and much more. All of these are very valuable but they require a lot of time out of our day.

I know that we make time for the things that we value and I do value giving students choice so I am reworking my plan for Explore Time. I think that next year instead of having a block of time that is dedicated to exploring, I will add an explore center to our center times during the day. During my Readers's Workshop, we have a chunk of time during which we have centers. These are not traditional centers with pre-made activities for students to complete. My centers are a little like Daily 5 work stations where students have different ways to read, write and work with words. I also have a couple of math centers and centers related to our Expedition. I think I will add a new center or two next year. I might add a Wonder Center, an Explore Center and/or a Building Center. In this way, I can give students more time to explore and make choices but within the time frame that we already have set up.

Math Workshop ~ Follow Up

It is way past time to reflect back on how moving to a math workshop is going in my classroom. Overall, I am very happy with how things are going but I have to admit that things are not going exactly how I planned. Isn't that often the case, though?

I had planned to start slowly and begin meeting with one small group each day towards the end of our Math time but that turned out to be more difficult than I expected. I was always so involved with working with individuals that I lost track of time and didn't have time to meet with my new group. I think I was having trouble changing how I used my time each day. I couldn't break out of my normal math routine. So I had to come up with Plan B.

Plan B was to do Everyday Math on Monday through Thursday and then spend all of my math time on Fridays meeting with small groups to do Math Exchanges type work. This is going very well. My class and I really look forward to Fridays. We do three rotations during which I meet with 3 different heterogeneous groups of 4 students. My Educational Assistant (who also happens to be a certified teacher - I know- how lucky am I?) also meets with 3 groups during these rotations, too. This means that we are able to meet with almost all of our students every Friday. We rotate through the groups so that we eventually see all of the groups.

While this is going on, the students not meeting in a group with one of the teachers do other math activities. We have various centers that they can choose from including computers, Everyday Math games and other math games. We have a parent volunteer who comes in and helps manage these centers and answer any questions that might come up. So far it is running very smoothly.

The best part for all of us is the discussions that we have when meeting in the small groups. The kids just jumped right in and were willing to tackle tough problems together right from the start. One of our most recent problems was:

Jill has 10 cookies to share with her friends Mary Beth and Dee. How many cookies will each friend get?

As the first group and I read the problem together, one student immediately started shaking his head saying this won't work. The other students ignored him at first and counted out 10 blocks to begin dividing up the cookies. It didn't take long before the conversation started. They couldn't figure out what to do with the "leftover" cookie. Each group that I met with had the same issue and then had such wonderful discussions to figure out what to do.

Some groups simply refused to cut the cookie into pieces. They just left that cookie out even when I questioned them and tried to get them to look for other solutions. One student said that cookies just crumble when you cut them so you should just leave that cookie out.

Another student used the fact that the names I used in the story were teachers from our school. She decided that I should just give the extra cookie to my daughter, Abby.

One student (the student who was shaking his head when we read the problem) counted out the blocks and saw the leftover cookie and immediately cut it into 3 pieces.

One group quickly decided that the leftover cookie had to be cut into 3 pieces but had lots of discussion about how to cut it in a "fair" way. They drew lots of variations that they decided weren't fair (or "fare" as they spelled it). Finally someone in the group thought of cutting the cookie like a "peace sign" and they were all satisfied that this would be fair.

The discussion in our small group times are very lively and the students learn so much. I, too, learn so much about them as mathematicians. Another great thing is that this type of thinking and sharing is spilling into the rest of our math time during other days of the week. This will help as we try to transition to more of a workshop feel every day of the week. Below are some examples of kids thinking about a problem that was trying to determine which number is bigger, 23 or 15 and then they had to determine how much bigger. This student made each number in tally marks to compare them

and this student counted up from 15:

The exciting thing is that the students are much more willing to write and draw out their thinking as well as share their ideas with each other. There is still lots of work to do and I want to make all of my days have more of a workshop feel but I have to take it step by step.

First Steps ~ Moving Towards a Math Workshop

I recently finished reading Math Exchanges by Kassia Omohundro Wedekind, and experienced an awakening of sorts. I have met with two colleagues (who have read or will be reading Math Exchanges) and we are now ready to start making some changes to our math blocks to better meet the needs of our students. I have many ideas running through my head and so to help me organize my thoughts, I am just going to create a list of things I plan to change and/or try.

Before I begin, I should probably say that my school is an Everyday Math school. I do like Everyday Math but I often wish I had more flexibility with my time and I feel that my students need a deeper understanding of number sense and more problem solving. These are both present in Everyday Math but I think my students need more. I generally follow the Everyday Math program fairly closely but I want to have more of a workshop feel than I currently do. Everyday Math lessons follow a predictable format: mental math and reflexes, a whole group lesson, practice which can include independent work, partner work and games which is similar to a workshop model. After doing some thinking and talking with my teammates we decided that we can use most of these parts and create more of a workshop feel on our own. So we will still use Everyday Math but will begin to tweak things more and more as the year progresses.

Below are some of my ideas of things that I want to try and/or change.

• The first thing that I plan to do is to be more open to "going with the flow" of ideas that come up naturally in any math related discussion. I will not keep one eye on the clock and worry about "getting finished" on time. I will follow the students' thinking and have them share more with the rest of the class. This will help foster that workshop feeling that I am trying to create.
• The next thing that I want to add is to begin to use what Kassia Omohundro Wedekind calls Mathematician Statements. These statements are just lists of things that mathematician do. Some examples include: Mathematicians ask themselves questions and Mathematicians persevere. This will help to develop the workshop culture by labeling the actions that mathematicians do as they solve problems.
• I also plan to add small group meeting times or Math Exchanges to our day. I'll start with meeting with one small group each day towards the end of our math time. These groups will be heterogeneous and will change over time. My goals for the small group meetings are to be able to work more closely with students because they are in a smaller group, to have more time for students to share their ideas with each other, and to be able to gather data about how each student approaches problems and what they know and can do. I also hope that students will feel more comfortable sharing their thinking in a smaller group. 
• Another way that I plan to add more math to my day is to do some math during our morning meeting. I have two books that I am planning to use to help me with this. They are Doing Math in Morning Meeting by Andy Dousis and Margaret Berry Wilson and Number Sense Routines by Jessica Shumway.
• I will also use many of the ideas in Number Sense Routines to add to the mental math portion of the Everyday Math lesson. I have ten frames that I made years ago and haven't used much lately at all. I can't wait to dust them off.
• I also made many games that I read about in a book by Constance Kamii years ago. (I can no longer remember the name of that book.) I plan to use these along with other activities like counting collections (from Math Exchanges) to provide choices of things for students to work on while I meet with my small group each day.
• Keeping notes on student strengths and next steps will also be part of my small group time each day.
• Finally, I want to take Kassia Omohundro Wedekind's advice and teach my students to live like mathematicians. I want us to notice the math that is all around us all the time and to take the time to bring it up and talk about it.

So this is where I plan to start. I still hope to continue to move towards a more full-blown math workshop but I am starting here and will continue to revise as we move through the rest of the year.

Note to Self: This post is getting long but I wanted to add this note to myself about things to add to our math workshop later. Remember to think about how number talks can fit in and to add technology as one of the choices - things like explaining your thinking in a Voice Thread or in an app like Show Me or Screen Chomp on the iPad. Those can also be future posts.