Write the Room: An Ode to Math Centers in Kindergarten (and why it's ok to have students up and
- Jordan
- Oct 3, 2017
- 3 min read
Kindergarten math is the actual best. Developing number sense through rote counting and one to one correspondence, organizing and categorizing by defining attributes, and introducing flat and solid shapes. And if you're really cranking on your pacing, you even get to play with money! It is a manipulative-heavy, hands-on, make-a-mess-and-then-make-sense-of-it-all kind of environment and it is crazy fun. During my math block, I like to do an intro activity, like a quick image subitizing card set, or a choral count and number talk. Then we roll into a whole group mini-lesson from our curriculum. And then, dun dun DUUUUHHHH we go to math centers! Center time is for students to further develop their mathematical thinking and reasoning in an independent or lightly-guided setting. Students need to physically count a tub of materials, they need to roll dice and find the number on their mat, and most importantly, they need to see math happening in the world around them. My most favorite math center is Write the Room, and let me tell you why...
Write the Room in my class involves students walking around the room with a clipboard and a pencil, finding picture cards, counting the images on the card, and writing the total in the box on their recording papers. It's a fairly straight-forward activity, but it rocks for so many reasons. First, Write the Room gets kids up and moving. In a kindergarten classroom, a moving student is a learning student because they are using all of their senses as they navigate through their space (maybe less of their sense of taste, but I will admit to saying the words "Please don't lick the wall" on more than one occasion). Second, Write the Room demands that students hunt around the room for math. As adults, we tend to think of math as calculus, or algebra, or that trick of moving the decimal over when calculating the tip on a bill. But for early learners, math is fundamental number sense and can only be practiced through routine exposure and manipulation of quantities. A card with four cats can be described with the numeral 4 next to the picture of a cat. Sounds basic, and it is, but it's the foundation of everything else. And third, Write the Room is fun! I've seen students work together to find the cards around the room, I've heard them helping each other out by finding the numeral on the number line before writing it carefully next to the box. And I've seen kids beaming with pride when they have completed the task. Their diligence, their independence, their stamina all paid off, and now they have a written record to show off!
I introduce Write the Room sometime in late September/early October and for the first few weeks, I focus primarily on one to one correspondence with quantities 0-10. From there, I can coordinate my Write the Room cards to match the curriculum topics, including things like shapes, sizes, and combinations of tens and ones. Because I do four centers a week, every week from October through June, I make oodles of Write the Room sets and I'm thrilled to finally have a platform on which to share them. Here's a quick step-by-step:
1. Print out the cards that work with your classroom content from my TpT site.
2. Cut along lines to separate each card.
3. Laminate (for durability and because I have yet to find something not worthy of lamination).
4. Tape up around the room.
Tip: put cards in places that encourage movement, so the more spread out, the better! Remember to put them at student eye-level, and while they should be somewhat creatively placed, I've found that putting cards on the undersides of tables leads to more chaos than counting. I've recently started putting cards near new anchor charts to subconsciously reiterate where students can access other resources around the room. No clue how effective this is but it's been a fun experiment.
5. Each week, swap out cards for next week's, changing the placements slightly so kids don't get too routine about it. I keep the cards in a pencil pouch and the recording sheets in a folder all inside my math centers binder.
Download, try, let me know how they work in your classroom, and as always, let the idea of the material guide you more than the game itself. Write the Room is all about student's active engagement and independent practice in math. I hope that this resource brings meaning to your math block, and if you have other ways of doing that in your room, please share!
Teach on!
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