I am excited to be teaming up with an amazing group of teacher bloggers, once again, to bring you the "Bright Ideas Link Up". This link up was created to bring you practical classroom ideas from a variety of teachers, from different grades and subject areas. I hope you find some great ideas that you can easily implement in your own classroom.
Enjoy!
Are you thinking about next year already? I bet you are!
Just because we are on holidays doesn't mean we ever stop planning. As teachers, I feel that we are always reflecting, and thinking of ways to make this next year bigger and better.
This month, I decided to go into a little more detail with last month's post, and talk about establishing a routine. Seeing that I LOVE Math, I am going to tell you how I go about setting up a Math routine in my classroom.
Establishing routines and expectations is so important, especially at the beginning of the year. Once students understand the expectations, they become more willing participants because they know what to anticipate.
Just because we are on holidays doesn't mean we ever stop planning. As teachers, I feel that we are always reflecting, and thinking of ways to make this next year bigger and better.
This month, I decided to go into a little more detail with last month's post, and talk about establishing a routine. Seeing that I LOVE Math, I am going to tell you how I go about setting up a Math routine in my classroom.
Establishing routines and expectations is so important, especially at the beginning of the year. Once students understand the expectations, they become more willing participants because they know what to anticipate.
The idea - Setting up a Math routine
Whether it's math class, or any other subject, students need to be able to walk into your room and know what they need to do! Here's what my routine looks like in my Math classroom...
Monday - Mental Math Mania - Get your students to master their basic facts. I like to switch it up by using different mental math activities each week. Variety helps those students who dread mental math.
Tuesday - Tricky Brain Teasers - Challenge your students and get them using their problem solving skills. This ranges from projecting optical illusions, solving riddles, puzzles, and challenges, anything to get the students thinking and engaged.
Wednesday - Wacky Number Warm-ups - Help your students strengthen their number sense. These activities range from "Number of the Day", "Mystery Numbers", "Spot the Imposter", etc. Any activity that gets your students "playing" with numbers and using math vocabulary.
Thursday - Thinking Math Thoughts - Get your students to write openly about their feeling and thoughts about all things related to math. Get them thinking by providing them with a journal starter, and have a possible class discussion afterwards.
Friday - Fun & Fast Games - Let your students have some fun with math, as a celebration to the end of the week. This is usually used as an incentive to behave through the class, as the game is played in the last 10 minutes.
Each of these daily activities is intended to take only 5 - 10 minutes, but it gets your students engaged and in the right frame of mind to start your math class.
Monday - Mental Math Mania - Get your students to master their basic facts. I like to switch it up by using different mental math activities each week. Variety helps those students who dread mental math.
Tuesday - Tricky Brain Teasers - Challenge your students and get them using their problem solving skills. This ranges from projecting optical illusions, solving riddles, puzzles, and challenges, anything to get the students thinking and engaged.
Wednesday - Wacky Number Warm-ups - Help your students strengthen their number sense. These activities range from "Number of the Day", "Mystery Numbers", "Spot the Imposter", etc. Any activity that gets your students "playing" with numbers and using math vocabulary.
Thursday - Thinking Math Thoughts - Get your students to write openly about their feeling and thoughts about all things related to math. Get them thinking by providing them with a journal starter, and have a possible class discussion afterwards.
Friday - Fun & Fast Games - Let your students have some fun with math, as a celebration to the end of the week. This is usually used as an incentive to behave through the class, as the game is played in the last 10 minutes.
Each of these daily activities is intended to take only 5 - 10 minutes, but it gets your students engaged and in the right frame of mind to start your math class.
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For even more bright ideas, please browse through the link-up below, and choose a topic/grade level that interests you. Thanks for visiting!
I couldn't agree more about the importance of routines to start the year! Thanks for sharing your bright idea :)
ReplyDeleteKate
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