Summer Reading

So, I am reading two absolutely FABULOUS books this summer.  One I just finished, but I will likely re-read it as we get into August and I am doing more planning for the instructional practices in math.  The other I have just started.  I am so excited because I get to do a book study this summer with some teachers from my previous school.  Very smart ladies so I will learn a lot.  They were so kind to share a copy of the book with me and include me in their plans!  I am feeling very fortunate.

The book around math instruction covers how to implement a workshop model into your math block, but more importantly outlines that types of deeper thinking questions you might work with students on in small-group.  The significance of this being that you are then providing all students opportunities for analytic thinking no matter what their math ability.  This is somewhat counter to the way I have been previously utilizing small-group in my math instruction since I was often just re-teaching and giving additional practice with math concepts.  I am looking forward to trying out some of the ideas!  A couple of my wonderful colleagues and I already started the work of talking through the math block for our first grade classrooms next year!