Math Monday on Tuesday

So I've got my google reader down to 730. It was over 1000. There were so many blogs to catch up on, google reader wouldn't even tell me how many. I finally got Chris and I's bedroom cleaned and organized. Now to continue tackling the rest of the house. Chris moved the rest of his stuff in yesterday.

I'm trying to take a picture everyday of our first year of marriage. This was the picture from yesterday. We're slowly combining our lives. It's so weird to be living with a boy.
Anyway, now that the wedding and honeymoon are over, it is time to focus on some school projects. I have quite a bit of reading to do. I need to read chapters 1-6 of In Pictures and Words and then review Daily 5 chapter 2 and 3. I also need to continue reading Math workstations. But I did read chapter 3 before I went on my honeymoon so here are some thoughts on that chapter.
You can see my first post on Math Work Stations where I talk a little about chapter 3 and the need for modeling.
Diller recommends making a chart about what math stations look like, sound like, feel like. This reminds me of the tree maps we've made on other topics. This is also similar to the charts that we've made in Daily 5 about what students are doing and what teachers are doing during the different components. I think this would be a good chart to make when moving from the exploration stations to the more work stations. She also suggests posting this chart with digital pictures of kids actually doing the behaviors listed. I love using the kids' pictures in charts and books. I think they pay more attention to things that way.
Her suggested schedule is to have a minilesson (this is a lesson about math work stations not math concepts), math stations, and then sharing time. I like the idea of having a sharing time after you finish work stations for the days. In the back of her book, Diller provides questions to guide this time. I made a smaller version of them but I'm not sure about sharing them. Anyone have any ideas, if that would be ok or not?
Another idea in this chapter that I really liked was making I can charts with the students for each station. I've seen this in a lot of TPT items and DeeDee Wills has them in all her things she sells. We tried some of this last year but I really didn't utilize the I can chart to it's fullest potential. Some suggestions were to use a 4 x 5 index card and post on the lid of the tub or an 8 x11 paper and post in the area.
The last thing I really took from the chapter was the math talk cards. Kids need to be using the proper vocabulary while doing math. Diller suggests making these with the students and using illustrations to help explain the term. Of course there is modeling involved in using these math talk cards. This is something that I definitely want to try next year. Have you used math talk cards before? I've used math vocabulary cards that I put on my word wall. I have plans to finish a set of those to share with you guys, but I think the file is on my computer at school. This seemed like a good opportunity to review math concepts that you already have taught.  I think I've completed all my crazy, scattered thoughts on chapter 3. I'm so ready to start this next year. I made some cards to help with organization that I've shared before on my blog. It has numbers 1-8 and then some literacy station cards that are loosely based on daily 5.The frames are From the Pond Graphics. If you download them, leave me some comment love. I'd love to hear about how you do math stations in your class.  If I figure out whether I can share the questions I made, I'll share those and some headers for a math station anchor chart. I'll back tomorrow with thoughts on either Daily 5 or In Pictures and Words. Hopefully, I'm keeping my niece Sophie tomorrow and she keeps me busy.

Math Station Card