Math Stations Differentiated!

Hello from the lakes of Northern Michigan.  My name is Marsha from A Differentiated Kindergarten and I am so delighted to take a little virtual trip today to Texas to fill in for my kinder blogging pal Crystal and introduce you to my MOST favorite small group activity . . .  MATH STATIONS!  Ask any kinder in my classroom and they'll tell ya, 'Mrs. McGuire LOVES math stations."  There is just something about how smoothly they run, students are so engaged and to be honest, it's just plain fun.  While I've used Debbie Diller's book, Math Work Stations  to get me started, of course, I've had to tweak it a bit here and there to make her style fit my own classroom and the way I differentiate for my kinders. 

I use a base of nine different stations which students rotate through twice before I typically change them.  Even though there are nine stations available, at any given time, only six are being used.  Each drawer is assigned a number and the numbers 1-9 move down through the six groups of students I have.  I like this drawer system because it's neat and there aren't many activities that can't be stored easily in them.  Plus my students can manage retrieving and putting them back independently. BONUS!  The other HUGE addition to my stations I started this year, is to identify a 'materials handler' in each group.  These are the students who hand out and put away all the objects from an activity. No one else is allowed to grab or handle the materials unless the material manager gives them directions.  This has been a MAJOR help in eliminating fighting and bickering over who gets to do what.

There are no more than four students at a station and depending on the activity, they either work in pairs, individually or as a group.  Because my room is so small, this has been the best system and number for me.  Groups are color coded to help with tiering but are very flexible.  I switch up groups and a students name may be on a different colored tag (that's why I laminate them) depending on the skills we are working on during a given rotation.

The way the colored systems works is that, if a station is tiered, inside the drawer students will find a corresponding bag or envelope or some kind of similar storage systems with their colored 'dot' on it. So for instance, a students who has their name on an orange tag will look for orange dot and use the materials from that envelope.  All the students who visit this station will do the same kind of activity, their will just be different materials to meet their level of readiness. Also, the groups are not always necessarily one color.  Because everything in the drawer is coded, I could literally have three different colors of student tags working from the same drawer because they each would know which work was for them.  Kind of like 'oh my name is on an orange tag so the activities I can choose from are in the orange bag/envelope.'

Here's an example of what I mean.
If you look at my math station planning page for math stations it looks something like this . . .

You'll notice that each station has a place to indicate the 'core concept or skill' (one of the three guiding principals of differentiated instruction) and then there are three sections where, if the activity is tiered, I can indicate how.


So for station number 7 above, when a students arrive at that station they will find in their drawer three envelopes that look like this:

If the student's name is written on a blue card, they would grab the blue envelope, green card green envelope and so on.  In each envelope is a recording sheet for a common subtraction write the room activity.  The difference is that they will be looking for different cards that correspond with their particular recording sheet and tier.

When they find the write the room cards, they will look like this:

By looking at their recording sheet, they can see that they are looking for either the green, blue or pink bordered cards and corresponding see animals.  Surprisingly, they pick up this system very easily and it works like a charm in my tiny little room.


I want to point something important out to you. You'll notice that I don't tier EVERY station.  No one has that much time. In fact, if you're just starting out tiering your stations, I would say just start with one or two stations being tiered.  Also, when you introduce a new skill or new materials such as solid shapes or tens blocks, you'll need to give your kiddos some time to explore those materials initially.  I find if I make new materials 'exploratory' for a certain amount of time, then I don't see as much 'playing' when it comes time to really work with them.

Ok, so I hope I got your gears moving a bit and have you thinking about differentiating your math stations.  By all means, if you have questions, stop on over to A Differentiated Kindergarten and check me out and in the meantime, I never go 'visiting' without bringing a gift, so below, please find a differentiated tens frame/number recognition activity for you to use this fall with your new batch of kiddos.  If you decide to download it, I hope you stop on over to my blog and leave me a comment of what you think.


Thanks for making my visit a pleasant one.

Thanks Marsha for posting! I LOVE your ideas! I am such a visual learner so these picture are perfect. I am just saying hi from Oklahoma. Nothing tragic has happened this week and that has been fabulous. J We are having a great time with family and if it were up to my kiddos, we would stay another week but I need to get home so I can get ready for Frog Street Press. J Here are the units I posted yesterday. More to come soon. Have a great (and safe) weekend. Thanks again to all of my guest bloggers while I am chilling with my family. <>< Crystal