First Post

This is my first post...and I am new to the world of blogging so bare with me as I figure this out! I decided to start this blog as a way to put ideas out there about teaching and to get feedback from anyone who is reading! We'll see how it goes...

My mission this summer is to develop math workshop. I know this is old news for some amazing teachers out there, but I have never tried it. I just ordered Debbie Diller's Math Work Stations book, which I am hoping will be helpful. I teach 2nd graders (about 30 kids in my class each year) and our school uses Everyday Math, which at first glance seems hard to teach workshop style. Keep in mind I have 60 minutes at best to teach math each day. Here is what I am thinking so far:

- 3 rotations
- mini-lesson taught multiple times (2 or 3) to smaller groups of students that take about 20 minutes
- math work stations

I teach reading workshop using the CAFE/ Daily 5 model and want to come up with something like CAFE for math. My ideas so far are: quick recall, number sense, and computation. QNC? Not quite as catchy as CAFE...I think I'll have to keep thinking of a name for it! I am thinking though that each mini-lesson could fall under one of those umbrellas and then as we add skills/ strategies to the "QNC Board" students can do activities or play games at the work stations to practice.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? I am open to any and all suggestions?