Practice Makes Perfect- MS Sunday Funday

                                                              

This week's topic is about practicing.

For me, practice is about fun, games and yes, even homework.

This year, I am being very consistent with homework. Students get hw Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. We go over it in class the next day, not all of it, but we do several problems together. I think it is good practice, because its normally 5-10 questions and students have access to notes we have taken in class.

I have blogged about my homework policy here.

Here is an example of an assignment we sent home. This one has directions and an example on the front.

 The second sheet is for our parents. I include this on my website to help them help their child with homework.

The other way we practice is through games. Sometimes, its just games, sometimes its in a station format. With my larger classes, they stay in their seats and the stations rotate. In my smaller classes, they can move around. It's about crowd control sometimes.

I teach a Math lab and it is completely designed in a station rotation format. Students complete four stations a week and stations are all game formatted. This is their second math class of the day. These students failed the state test and this gives them an extra class to help them with their math skills.

This is my kids playing Bubble Burst on the Promethean board. This game is practicing prime and composite numbers. They LOVED it.

When you have a few free hours, check out this site. It's from a teacher named Janet who has made a gazillion interactive games. They are really great.

If you haven't checked out Laura Candler's resource for Middle School Math Stations, try this game.

It's Factor Race and it's one of her freebies. My kids are playing this in Math Stations this week.

We have used one or more of her games every week this past six weeks. This one is Math Race and we have used it twice, once for comparing decimals and once for adding decimals.

I also received a grant from donorschose.org and my kids get to play these on Fun Fridays. We have only had a few of those this year. It's a reward for my math lab kids when they work hard during the week and complete their stations on time.

This is the Math Uno game we played a few weeks back. It came from Pinterest. Gotta love that site!

So, how do you practice?