Classroom activities are where math comes alive! Personally, I loved the discourse, the teamwork, and the application that occurred with my students when working through an activity. Here are some broad stroke tips for how to implement activities in your math classroom.
Filter the Activities On the New Platform
The All Access platform makes finding aligned activities easier than ever! Open up your unit, filter by “activities,” and you will see which activities are aligned with which lesson. Save the activity for that lesson day, to review before the unit test, or to spiral later in the school year.
You can also filter by a standard if you’d like to see the activities that are available to practice a specific skill.
Set Your Expectations
The biggest challenge you will face during math activities is that all students are participating thoughtfully. To do this, I liked to make sure my presence was felt as I circulated and gave feedback to groups or partners. It was also important to verbalize HOW they can contribute when working together. Contributions include: reading the problem to the group, checking notes, setting up the problem, calculating, and keeping everyone on track.
Give Many Time Reminders
Remind students how many minutes they have to do each part of the activity. My students rarely finished if I gave them 30 minutes to work on any task. Instead, I would say something like “You have 5 minutes to finish _____. Then you need to start on _____.” For stations or scavenger hunts, I also would give X number of minutes at each problem before having students rotate. This helped students stay evenly distributed around my classroom too.
Rethink the Format
There is always the traditional way to implement an activity, but there are also other ways to spice it up! Here are 2 examples:
Mazes: The standard way for students to complete this math activity is with partners or individually. Students would solve the problems and follow the correct answers by coloring to the finish line.
A different format: Since my students were pretty much obsessed with racing, mazes were an easy way for students to be split into groups to race through the maze. Each group (2 or 3) gets a single copy of the maze. Each person works on a problem and then passes the paper off to the next person in their group until they hit the finish line.
Cut and Pastes: The standard way for students to complete this activity is with partners or individually. Each student cuts, solves problems, matches, and then glues until all of the problems are complete.
A different format: Since cut and pastes can take so long when 30 students are cutting at varying speeds, make it a station where the pieces are already cut. Some teachers may laminate this ahead of time or put the pieces on magnets. Either way, a partners can still work through the problems, match the pieces to where they go, have you check (or you provide an answer key), and then scramble the pieces for the next group.
For Review and Reinforcement
Math activities are not confined to the unit that their material is covered. Activities can be used as extension (Solve and Color, Find It Fix It, and He Said She Said) or can be used in a small group setting (Task Cards). Activities not used in their assigned unit can be used in tutorials, intervention, or before state testing.
Have a Routine
Like any successful part of my classroom, activities thrive when students knew what to expect. Activities were going to happen on Wednesday (my shorter class period day) or before a quiz. It really helped that I could fill in my pacing calendar with my Activity Wednesdays – a perfect “decide once!”
Here are a few other ways to create a routine around activities:
- Same partners (their desk neighbors)
- Print the activities on the same colored card stock, so they are instantly visible (for stations or scavenger hunts)
- You check your work at an answer station after a certain number of problems
- Directions are always posted during the activity (Pro tip: Always have directions on your projector, so you can point when students ask a frequently asked question.)
Share the Load
If there are other math teachers on your team, divide and conquer the prep required for some of the activities and then share! Teacher A prints, cuts, and laminates the cut and paste while Teacher B prints, cuts, and laminates all of the Task Cards. All you have to do is coordinate which days you will be using the activities! Personally, I can vouch for holding my students way more accountable for cleaning up and storing the activities correctly if I know another class will be using them soon.
Storage Tips
- Use clear baggies for small pieces. Write down the number of pieces that should exist inside the baggie with a permanent marker on the outside. (Hint: small pieces should never be the same color as the tile/carpet in your classroom)
- These zipper pouches are perfect for most activities! Each pouch can fit a class-size amount of one type of activity.
- Task cards are great on a ring, but consider how you use them! I liked to play Scoot with task cards, so it made more sense for them to be in a baggie or binder clip.
There are a million other ways to implement and organize math activities in your classroom! Share yours below!
