Math Meeting Updated

As I've written before, I've been working to make my math routine more interesting. I was reading one of my favorite 2nd grade blogs, Second Grade Shenanigans, and I came across her morning math meeting called Mission Possible Math.

Her math routine is so much fun! Unfortunately some of the technology she has available to her that I would LOVE to have (cough cough SMARTBOARD) I do not have access to. I do, however, have a computer and a projector. So I tweaked her fun idea to make it work for me.

Math goes as follows:

1. Calendar Time
- We talk about how to write the date, both long form and with numbers, discuss upcoming dates, and sing a few songs, including "Days of the Week" to the tune of the Adams Family.

Days of the Week *snap snap*

Days of the Week *snap snap*

Days of the Week, Days of the Week, Days of the Week

There's Sunday, and there's Monday

There's Tuesday, and there's Wednesday

There's Thursday, and there's Friday

And then there's Saturday

Days of the Week *snap snap*

Days of the Week *snap snap*

Days of the Week, Days of the Week, Days of the Week

2. Daily Weather

- Students make predictions about the current temperature. We then look at the class thermometer to see which prediction is the closest, record the finding on our temperature graph, and then make observations about the trends we see on the graph.

3. Counting

- I posted about this earlier, so if you want more details about this process, click here.

4. Mission Possible Math

- Students take out their Mission Possible Math binders for a daily independent practice of several skills.  I got the materials from Second Grade Shenanigans for free (which is amazing).

The outside of the binder looks like this

The inside looks like this 

The students have four practice problems in the top squares. Recently I've been giving them two word problems, one pattern problem, and one square I use for math facts review. Then they practice time. I give them a digital time, then they write the time on an analogue clock, as well as 1 hour later and 1 hour earlier. The last task they do is practicing number sense. I give them a random number and they write if it is odd or even, put it in extended form, and identify the "number neighbors" (which numbers come before and after). 

Hope King uses a Smart Board for this, but I've been using Powerpoint and my projector to do pretty much the same thing.

Powerpoint slide for the Mission Possible Math

The projection on my board

I give students about 8-10 minutes to complete the work. When they've finished I ask them to take out a colored pencil and we go over the answers. Since I project onto the dry erase board, I write directly on the board as we correct. 

To wrap things up, I project a Flocabulary video and the students sing along. 

Once we finish the math raps, the students come to the carpet and I begin the daily lesson. So far it's been working pretty well for me, but I'm sure I'm be changing things for a while until I think its perfect (if that's even possible).

Counting in Second Grade

As I mentioned before in my post about Flocabulary, I have been working on creating a more effective math meeting as part of our Saxon Math curriculum. My first step was adding music with the math raps from Flocabulary. My second, was making the counting portion more engaging.

Saxon Math has a daily counting activity as part of the morning routine, but my students were not only bored, they were slightly insulted that they were being asked to count while looking at a numbers chart. The last thing seven year olds want to do is feel like they're still in preschool. That being said, I think counting and working with numbers is extremely beneficial for number sense. So I decided to make things a bit more interesting.

I started using a counting technique I learned in graduate school. First, I never start on the same number each day. I range from 1-300. We count by 1s, 2s, 5s, or 10s, depending on the day. We can count backwards or forwards. And instead of looking at a pre-made numbers chart, I write the numbers as we count. When we finish, I ask students to look at the numbers chart we've made and have them look for patterns.

For example, in this picture a student noticed that in the 5th column, the numbers in the ones place have an ABAB pattern (1,6,1,6). Another student noticed that starting in the first column doing diagonally,  the numbers are going up by 6. When that was mentioned, a different student saw that the numbers at the top of the 5th column going diagonally are adding 4 as they go down. I ask them to use mathematical language to describe what they see, so each student is expected to use this terminology as I record them on the board. They are able to practice ordinal numbers, place value, addition, subtraction, and patterns simultaneously. As each day goes by students find more sophisticated and interesting patterns and they truly enjoy this activity.

This takes twice as long as a simple "counting with a hundreds chart" activity, but I have found this to be very beneficial for my students and absolutely worth the time.


Happy counting!

Math Music

My school uses Saxon Math and a large component is the morning math meeting. I'm all for math meetings (I had a really cute one when I taught K) but the saxon math meeting is really dry. So I've been looking around for ideas to make math more engaging. 

I am excited to say that I have found math music that is SUPER engaging. Introducing...

FLOCABULARY

Flocabulary raps are legit in several ways. First, the performer is an actual rapper, not some lame old man. Second, students are working on math skills in a way that is excellent for auditory and kinesthetic  learners (there are movements with many of the songs).  I feel a lot of  kids would connect to the style of these songs, but my students in particular, who are students of color and live in poverty, absolutely LOVE them.

You can buy the CDs or subscribe to the website that has music videos. Since I use my projector with my computer during math, I chose the subscription route. Check out Flocabulary's Website to see how it works in your classroom! There is a free trial for the subscription, which is how I got hooked. They also have raps for language arts, science, math, social studies, and current events. 

Hooray for a fun math routine!