Math Workshop: Organizing It All

I have been doing a form of Math Workshop (we call them rotations in my room) for a few years now.  It has worked just fine, but I felt that I wasn't really holding my students as accountable as I could.  I also wanted to work in a bit more small group time for myself and my aide, so I changed my "two rotation" system to a "three rotation" one. 

Math instruction takes place in my room from 10:35 to 11:40am (with an added 20 minutes after lunch.)  I have a full hour and a half.  I know I am very lucky to have this time, so I use it.  :)  Here is what my Math time looks like:

10:40 - 11:00am    Rotation 1
11:00 - 11:20am    Rotation 2
11:20 - 11:40am    Rotation 3
Lunch
12:20 - 12:40am    Calendar Review/HW Review

There are three stations that the students are rotating through each day:

Mrs. Moorman (that is the teacher station)
Problem Solving
Calendar/Skill/Choice

I have broken my students into four groups.  Each group goes to each station daily.   Every group will go to a different station at a different time, beginning each day with either Problem Solving or Calendar.  During the first twenty minutes, I do not have a formal group.  During this time, I either pull a small group of students, or I walk around to help kids with their problem solving strategies.  Then, during Rotation 2 and 3, I teach my lesson for the day.  Two groups come to me at a time, and I basically teach the same lesson to both sessions.  That way, all four groups hear the same lesson daily.

In another post, I will go into more detail just what each station entails, but today, I thought I would show you how I organized each student.  They were given a folder with prongs.  All materials for the week are kept in this folder.  Since each group of students has a different schedule (as far as which rotation to go to on which day),





I gave them each a schedule to place in a page protector in the center of the folder.  They also have a recording sheet to keep track of what they are working on for the week.  This recording sheet is collected on Friday, along with all completed and unfinished work for a work habit grade.

Here are the sheets I used to set up the folders.

The "towers" as we call them hold all of the materials the students need for each of the rotations.  All of the groups are color coded, so all of the tubs match that color.   There is a Problem Solving tub and a Choice tub for each group.  There is also a Skills envelope for each group.  










 In the tubs are games, activities, and open ended math projects for the students to complete during the rotation.  These are designed to last more than one session.  The activities are also differentiated for each group.  So my lower groups have more remediation based activities while my highest group has more accelerated activities. 

I also have my aide schedule posted for the week so that she will know who to call.  I have it set up now so that during the Problem Solving rotation, she calls members over who need remediation in a skill they just haven't picked up.  I plan to see how that works, and then change it if necessary.  So far, so good.

What took the most thinking was setting up my groups so that every child visited every station every day.  If you click here, and scroll down, you will see my time tables for everything.  Once I had that figured out, everything else fell into place.

OK.  So that is how I set it up.  Do you do Math Workshop?  How is your schedule set up?

My next post in this series will be a more in depth look at the three stations I have.