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Math Stations

Math Stations – Intro Round

Math Stations August 27, 2012

Math Workstations are one of my favorite activities and they are one of my classes favorites too.  We started Math Stations 2 weeks ago and are completing a practice round. The practice round is mainly meant to practice getting math stations, working with a partner, and cleaning up math stations.  The first day we came up with our anchor chart that stated the expectations during Math Stations. 

Here are our expectations:

  • Use a Level 1 (whisper) voice
  • Share with your partner and take turns
  • Use rock, paper, scissors to make decisions
  • Talk about math stuff (patterns, numbers, adding, subtracting, shapes)
The chart is a little hard to see, but you still can get the idea.

For the first week or two of Math Stations, I put manipulatives and a math book in the bins.  I don’t start putting games in there yet because I mainly want them to focus on how to use the tools, how to work together, and the whole management piece of stations.  I’ve done this for two years now and find it to be very successful.  I have 12 stations going during Math Stations.  Below you can see how I set it up for the first week or two.

Stations 1 and 6 – Snap cubes and a math book
Stations 2 and 7 – Buttons (to sort and count) and a math book
Stations 3 and 8 – Math racks and a book
Stations 4 and 9 – Attribute blocks and a book
Stations 5 and 10 – Dominoes and a book
Station 11 – Laptops (not started yet)
Station 12 – Smart Board (a basic counting activity game)

As I mentioned in a previous post, all of my station ideas and ways for setting stations up have come from Debbie Diller’s Math Workstations book.  She’s fantastic.  After this week, the kids should have stations down and we’ll be able to start putting math games in from our Investigations unit. 

Here’s a picture of all of the Math Station bins. 

Math Stations

Debbie Diller, Math Stations June 28, 2012

I have always loved doing Literacy Stations with first graders and decided to give Math Stations a try this year.  I am so glad I did! I love them and they are a great way to review math skills, provide independent practice, and provide me a chance to meet with small groups during our math instructional focus groups time.  I used Debbie Diller’s Math Workstations book to help me set up and organize my stations. She has a ton of great ideas in there and a ton of great games and math practice. 

The first few weeks of school we started Math Stations and spent a lot of time setting up expectations for how they would run.  We made an anchor chart together the first day to set-up expectations. Our expectations were –

  • Use Level 1 whisper voice
  • Be kind and share
  • Take turns – rock, paper, scissors
  • Talk about math – numbers, patterns, shapes etc.

Sorry for the poor quality of this picture. I was taking quick shots of the room before the end of the year and wish the chair wasn’t in the way. Below you’ll see a picture of the Anchor Chart for Expecations.

After setting up our class expectations, I spent a lot of time explaining how the stations worked and we practiced how to use them and how to clean up – A LOT!  The first week or two, I had manipulatives in the station bins so they could get used to what we use in first grade, but didn’t need a lot of directions on what to do. I used manipulatives like pattern blocks, snap cubes, unifix cubes, tiles, foam shapes, etc.  This gave the kids a chance to practice how to act at stations without needing to also worry about how to play games.
Once stations were running smoothly and clean up went well, I started adding in math games. I have 12 math stations.  Station 11 is laptops and Station 12 is Smart Board. Stations 1-10 is located in a plastic container.  I double up stations so two stations are the same so that I’m not making up 10 different stations every few weeks. In addition to math games that we’ve played through Investigations being put in the bins (Compare, Count to 20, and more), I also put in math books that they can read with their partner.  I’ll put in more info on this later. Right now our school is being cleaned, so I don’t have access to everything so I’ll do a follow-up post. 
For partners, I pair kids in groups of 2 with kids that are at their math level. It makes pulling groups easier because I can just pull partnerships.  I use the pocket chart on my chalkboard to show what station kids are going to. See below…


Below you will see a picture of the bins where I keep the math stations. Again, please ignore the clutter. The end of the year isn’t the best for taking pictures like these.

Since everything is numbered 1-12, partners so they know which station to go to, bins so they know which bin to get, I also have areas around the room numbered. If a partnership is at Station 1, they grab the Station 1 bin and go to the designated location for Station 1. I find this helps ease the chaos of where do we go and everyone always wanting to go to the exact same spot. Each station has a location which helps keep things managable.
Sorry for this rambling post. This is probably the longest post I’ve written, but I’m so excited about Math Stations I had to share. I’ll add some game and book ideas later once I get back into my classroom. 
Hope everyone is having a great summer!