Sunday, January 24, 2016

Centerpiece

Earlier in the school year, I had the opportunity to go to a Kagan Cooperative Learning workshop. You may have seen my post.  If you missed it, you can click HERE to go back and take a look. Kagan is a revolutionary approach to teaching that actively engages every student.  It's "structures" are amazing and the kids eat them up every time we do them!

One structure that I love is called "Centerpiece."  You can play with any subject area, but I tend to play with Math more often than anything else.  Just copy some review pages of whatever skill you're wanting your kids to practice.  If everyone is doing the same thing, I will copy the different papers on different colors.  For example, in the photograph below, a group is working on addition.  I had 5 different worksheets for them to practice with.  I copied each one on a different color.  If you wish to differentiate, just chose more basic problems for your strugglers, just-right problems for your on levels and advanced problems for your higher achievers.  You can color code the sets to make grouping easy...I use pink, green, blue {and sometimes yellow, depending on the skill and range of students}.

To play "Centerpiece," put kids in groups.  Put a pile of review pages in the center.  When you say "Go," students will each grab one paper and solve one fact/question on it.  They will quickly place the paper back in the middle and grab a different one, solving a fact on that paper.  This continues on until all papers are complete.

Here we are all working on reviewing addition within 10.  We have a school goal that students will master 60 facts fluently by the end of the year.





Here we are working on the same skill--ways to make numbers.  Some friends have lower numbers than others.  I grouped homogeneously for this particular activity.





Centerpiece is a fast-paced and exciting review game for just about any skills!  Snag a freebie for the above activity below!  Enjoy!  


To see more differentiated Math activities, check these 3 new resources out:


xo
Megan 

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