CURRICULUM CENTRES

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Home : 2003 : October : 10

CURRICULUM CENTRES
By HEIDI

I find that our curriculum in New Brunswick includes many deep-thinking, problem solving types of activities for the kids. I structure my math instruction to start with mental math, then we go over a problem of the day (straight
out of the curriculum) which the kids try and I circulate with stickers for them if they raise a hand and have it right. Afetr about 5 minutes of work time on the problem, we go over it together on the board. this prevents frustration which otherwise might cause the kids who "are not getting it" to shut down on me. I try to include at least one easy question each week, so everyone

gets a sticker. Most questions are challenging. I also use curriculm questions on their weekly homwork sheet, which goes home Monday and is due on Friday. Some days I assign a worksheet or questions from our textbook to support the curriculum outcomes, and at least once veery two weeks, I do centres.

The centres are simply made up of curriculum questions that I feel the kids really need four heads to solve and work through. I usually allow 20 minutes then they rotate. It usually takes two days of math periods to complete the all the stations.

While the kids work, I circulate to get a sense of whether the group is on task and working cooperatively (sometimes they need hints to get started, so direct instruction sometimes comes into play. And sometimes they need to be reminded that all four people have to be in on it and have the answer in their notebooks). I don't collect their work, but will choose one or two problems to discuss as a class after we're done. I'm finding this is a great way to let kids work with manips, and tackle those thinker problems that they generally hate and groan about. And the kids who would generally shut down for such questions, are scaffolded by the teammates I put in a group with them. Bonus: Not only do they get direct instruction on concepts with problem of the day, but they also get a crack at many sample curriculum questions that I would never have been able to fit in otherwise!

I've had days where I took the class outside to do a measurment scavenger hunt too. It's not exactly a centres, but they worked in groups and they loved it! I made a list of what they had to measure, like the perimeter of the basketball court with a trundle wheel, the area of a step on the slide ladder, the lengths of a standing long jump for each of their team members, the tallest blade of grade they could find, I even asked them to measure the length of my car and figure out how many of it could fit between the parking lot and the far end of our soccer field. Of course, I had to gather up all the measuring devices in the school for this activity!