Early Math Counts

posted by Stephanie Forsman

Each morning, my class has a Morning Meeting that consists of a Morning Message, a Greeting, a Share, and an activity. It is a great way to start the day, reinforces our sense of community, and sets the expectations and goals for the day.  These meetings last anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. While I cover many topics during these meetings, my favorite topic is math. I love a Math Morning Meeting!

I have an interactive Morning Message (a message written on chart paper with an area for the kids’ responses) that the children work on during morning arrival and then later talk about during Morning Meeting.  Anything from identifying and giving the monetary value of coins to measuring various line segments with a ruler using both inches and centimeters, we try to either reinforce what we are working on in math or cover a topic that isn’t heavily hit upon in our curriculum. For example, when working on multiplication facts, I will put up problems that are related and share a pattern.

3 x 3 =

3 x 6 =

3 x 12 =

3 x 24 =

I have a problem for each of the children and one that I use as an example.

For Morning Meeting, we sit in a circle and begin with a Greeting. In keeping with our Math topic of the day, we play Match Card Greeting. I give each child a card on which I’ve written part of an equation. For example, one child gets a card that says “3 x 6”; and another student gets one that says “= 18.” The children move around trying to find the match for their card. When the children find their match, they greet each other. A simple “Hello” or “Good morning” is fine. I always keep a big stack of Index cards on hand for games such as this and this greeting can be adapted and/ or modified for almost any concept; addition, subtraction, shape recognition.

After the Greeting and the children are settled back into a circle, we do a Share. Share can be anything. Topic driven, partner share, a prearranged share in which one student shares something they’ve experienced or an object brought in from home.  During a Math Morning Meeting and when we are working on a specific skill, I will announce a topic for an around-the-circle sharing. Since we are working with multiples of “3”, I will refer back to the Morning Message and ask the children what they notice. “I am definitely seeing a pattern with not only the answers but the problems. Who else is noticing what I am noticing?” The children take a minute to think and then I will start to entertain answers. The children get so excited to share what they notice and there are usually so many extensions and directions I can go based on their observations, that I usually have to jot down notes and table some of their observations for another time.

Since we are working on multiples of “3”, we will play an adapted game of “Ruof” called, “eerht” which ends up sounding like “earth.”  Three spelled backwards. The children stand in a circle for this game. The children count off and on every multiple of “3”, they say “eerht”  1, 2, eerht, 4, 5, eerht… If the they say the multiple of three or make some other mistake, they sit down and the count off starts again.  I play this game for every multiple up to 12 and have even played this game using square and prime numbers. The children love it and challenge themselves to see how high they can count.

After the activity, the children sit back down and we end our Morning Meeting with a heads up about what we’ll be working on during math that day, pretty obvious given our Morning Meeting work and ask if there are any questions, comments or concerns.

Math Mornings Meeting are so beneficial and bring so much enthusiasm to the math that is happening in your classrooms. By 9:15 am, we’ve already had a good 20 minutes of math, the children had fun practicing their math facts, and their minds are warmed up and thinking about math for the rest of the day. I highly recommend the book, Doing Math in Morning Meeting, 150 Quick Activities That Connect to Your Curriculum by Andy Dousis, Margaret Wilson, Roxann Kriete. The book contains math-themed ideas for all four Morning Meeting components: greeting, group activity, sharing, and morning message. Have fun!

Click here to see the link to the book below.