How do you start your school day? I personally have struggled with this, this year. I believe in students having an entry that needs to be completed when they arrive, after hanging up backpacks and choosing their lunch, but what my kids were doing each day wasn't exactly what I had envisioned. They just completed a worksheet, either math or spelling practice AND I as the year ended I knew I was in need of something different. So I have decided to try Reagan Tunstall's Rise and Shine Binder! Read about it here!
This chapter has got me thinking about not only entry tasks but also my morning meeting in general. I have been trying to have a "responsive classroom" approach to my morning meetings where we greet each other everyday and read the morning message. After we would complete our calendar and days of the week, etc. Chapter 3 puts a huge emphasis on starting the day off with math warm-ups and math stretches. I'm not exactly clear on how to make them work however. I do however want to change things up a bit and try teaching math in the morning rather than the afternoon. I think it would be great with the calendar activities to move into a problem-solving task or work problem and then get into the math lesson. When do you teach math? Morning or Afternoon?
I'm always telling my students how important math and reading and that they take practice like learning to be good at a certain sport, but it's hard so students just why they need to know this stuff. I talk a lot about real life math when teaching about fractions and data but not so much when adding or subtracting. One thing I love that I learned from this chapter is about the math stretch's that Laney recommends. They include Number of the day, What's Next? (a pattern activity), How did my family use math last night? (DING, DING, DING! We have a winner!), ____ makes me think of...., and Data collection. All of these are great! But my favorite is "how did my family use math last night?" because they make connections between what they are learning at school and then seeing it at home. It seems so simple! Using measuring cups to bake, setting the temperature on the oven, figuring out how many minutes before going to bed, oh it's endless!
I feel like I have so many changes to make in my math instruction, the structure of my day and pretty much everything about my teaching and it's only chapter 3!
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