Math Stations - Intro Round

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.