In the math classroom, the feelings that students experience are often directly linked to their level of understanding and, therefore, to their academic success. Math centers are especially effective for boosting student confidence and can benefit those with skills just below grade level.

Lastly, as teachers we are always seeking time that we can conference with students in one-on-one and small group settings for intervention and assessment. Math centers allow teachers to do this while also ensuring the students are actively working and interacting with peers (Andreasen & Hunt, 2012). Math stations allow teachers to meet in small group settings with their students at least once a week and then for students to work on skills like problem solving, working with their peers, and interacting with a variety of materials to practice the same concept. Math centers are the perfect place for differentiated practice and assessment.

Distinguishing Features Of Math Centers

While the suggestions below, culled from my own experience and research, will provide you with a template for implementing math centers in your classroom. I should point out that my own experience began more with “rotations” rather than math centers themselves. For this reason, I want to share how this helped me shift my thinking.

Gallery Walks or Carousel activities allow students to get out of their seats and circulate in the rooms as they solve problems. A large number of simple problems can be posted around the room and students can circulate in pairs to complete the tasks. This moves us toward the idea of Math Centers, but while I have used them often (and still use them), they are not Math Centers in the truest sense of the term.

Math Centers are different from Gallery Walks or Carousels and have several distinguishing features:

• Students work in small groups of four to six, rather than in pairs

• The number of centers varies from as few as four to as many as seven, depending on the size of your class and how long your class period is

• The nature of tasks in a Math Center is a somewhat deeper than the type of quick problems used on a Gallery Walk or Carousel

• Tasks in Math Centers come from a series of routines that you have built in your classroom and can be recurring as you continue to manage your class in this mode

• One station in all well-developed Math Centers is dedicated to the teacher working with a small group of students for 10 minutes.

Fun Math Center Activities To Get Started

Key Decisions In Implementing Math Centers In The Classroom

Recognizing When To Use Math Centers

To ensure center work is successful, educators need to know when in the learning cycle to use Math Centers. Now, I don’t want you to think that I am doing Math Centers every day! They are only one of several ways I teach my students. Choosing the right strategy for certain content at different points in the learning cycle is part of the art of teaching.

Framing Your Plans For Math Centers

The number of students in your class and the length of your periods are major determinants in framing your plans for Math Centers. Through most of my teaching career, I have had relatively large classes of 26 to 30. I typically like to have no more than six students in a Math Center group.

With a class of 30 students and a 60-minute class, I can have five ten-minute stations with six students per group. Classes shorter than an hour will make organizing really great Math Centers difficult. Longer classes can mean smaller groups of four or five and more stations.

A typical class sessions using Math Centers looks something like this:

5 Minutes: Organize the groups and review the goals of each station

10 Minutes: Station 1

10 Minutes: Station 2

10 Minutes: Station 3

10 Minutes: Station 4

10 Minutes: Station 5

5 Minutes: Summarize and close out class (assign homework)

Grouping Students

Another key decision about Math Centers is how to group students—homogeneously or heterogeneously.

For me, one of the great advantages of using centers to structure a class is that once students learn the routines, I can insert myself at one of the stations, spending ten minutes with each group. When this is the case, I like to group my students homogeneously with at least one high-ability group and one or two groups that are struggling on the current topic. These ten minutes of focused time with groups of students at different levels of readiness allows me to differentiate my instruction, accelerating with students who are ready for a challenge, and providing support to students who are struggling with a concept or procedure.

At the beginning of the year, I would institute Math Centers fairly early on, but would keep them very simple, without a teacher-led station. I focus on having students getting used to the various routines that will allow the groups to function more independently as the year continues. At this time, I am probably grouping heterogeneously as differentiation is not the goal, but rather the development of routines.

After students have learned the routines, I can shift from my role as a supervisor to that of a station-leader. When I am ready to do this, I am usually using Math Centers more than a week into a topic—when I have a good idea of how students are doing. It is at that point where I am able to group students homogeneously and really meet their needs in those small group settings.

Developing Routines

Especially if you and your students are new to Math Centers, it is going to take some time to develop the routines that will make Math Centers function well in your classroom.

In the beginning of the school year, we focus on developing routines in our classrooms. What I recommend is to build routines as a whole class that can be incorporated into Math Centers. That way, your first few attempts at centers can focus on the rotation of students and not on the tasks themselves.

Math Center Ideas For The Classroom

Remember that each Math Center activity should last ten minutes; here is a list of that I would develop as a whole class, which can later be used in the centers.

#1 Frayer Models

Completing Frayer Models is a vocabulary development tool where students list the vocabulary word in the center of the page, and then complete four sections with a definition, facts/characteristics, examples, and non-examples. Students should be able to complete several Frayer Models at a station. This is a simple routine to teach as a class and implement as a station.

Download the Frayer Model Organizer template associated with this post and start using it today!

#2 Notebooks or Journals 

Checking notebooks or journals can be completed by students at one of the stations. I have students keep a separate notebook for only math class that includes class notes, class assignments, vocabulary, reflections, and so on.

After notebooks or journals are introduced to my students, I initially collect the notebooks myself and use a checklist to set the standard for what I expect. Then after a couple weeks I have students use a checklist, and as a whole class practice notebook checks. After students have learned the routine, this is a great station for a Math Center that results in a quick grade calculated by another student!

#3 Practicing Basic Skills Using Technology 

Practicing basic skills using technology, if you have it, is a great use of ten minutes in a Math Center. Some students will need to sharpen their basic facts. But all students can benefit from a set of exercises to memorize certain facts—decimal equivalents of fractions, perfect squares and cubes, square roots, and so on.

If laptops or tablets are available and your school subscribes to a online tool for basic facts, then this is the easiest of stations once students are trained in using the software. But even if you don’t have access to programs like this, flashcards can do the job!

#4 Writing Prompts 

Writing prompts can often be completed in ten minutes. It could be a quick note to a friend about how to complete a procedure, a comparison/contrast of two methods to solve a problem, or an open response item asking students for critiques or reasoning about a problem. With laptops and Google classroom, you can cut down on the amount of paper generated.

#5 Worksheets to Review Previously-Learned Concepts 

Reviewing previously-learned concepts and skills is an area that is easily overlooked in the rush to press forward in the curriculum. A quick worksheet to brush up on operations with base-ten numbers, fractions, percents and other proportions, measuring using centimeters or inches, creating line plots—there are so many topics. Self-correcting papers (ones with the answers listed on the side or bottom that help provide letters that solve a riddle… you’ve seen these, right?) allow students to see right away if they have the correct answer once they are trained to use them correctly.

#6 Practicing Current Skills and Concepts 

Practicing current skills and concepts is a station that requires little training. This station is best placed immediately after the teacher station, once you have it up and running.

#7 Rotating Through the Stations 

Rotating through the stations is a routine that also needs to be taught to students. Once you have taught several of the above-mentioned routines, you can start students’ rotation through Math Center stations.

The first few times, you will need to supervise this activity to make sure that students are learning the routine of efficiently and quietly changing stations. Your alert eyes and ears can help students keep their focus and learn this routine. There are some online timers that you can project on a smartboard or screen. For a series of ten minute stations, I like to set these timers for nine minutes and leave one minute for students to organize themselves. At the ten-minute mark they are ready to move.

In Summary

If you have never used Math Centers or rotations in your classroom, it is probably going to take a while to build the routines and get yourself adjusted to them. I would encourage you to push through the challenges so that you can add this powerful modality of teaching to your repertoire.

If you are looking for a great activity to start building routines for your Math Centers, download the Frayer Model Organizer for math classes and start using it today!

References

Andreasen, J. B., & Hunt, J. H. (2012). Using math stations for commonsense inclusiveness. Teaching Children Mathematics, 19, 238–246.

Romine, C. A. (2015). Effects of math centers on third grade assessment scores.