Stations - Up and Moving around the room

I love having the kids do stations.  It is a lot of work up front for me to create, organize, and plan, but it really seems to pay off.  The kids like to get up and move around and work together with friends.  I like to listen to their math conversations.  And, it gives me time one-on-one with a student if they are really stuck.

I combined a few ideas for stations for our review of polynomials.  I will include it here:  Station Review for Polynomials 

I read on someone's blog about letting the kids write on the windows.  Well, I have three big windows in my room and it really worked.  The kids thought it was pretty cool.  And, they got to write the problems twice.  I had them work it out on the window, then record the work on their papers as well.  Here are some pictures:
   

I had them working on the back white board: 

They did some multiplying with colored polynomials and made up their own problems given the classification.  For example, multiply a quadratic binomial by a linear binomial.

These boys are working on adding and subtracting polynomials.  I have small white boards (from Target) on which I wrote different polynomials.  The kids each picked two and then flipped a coin with a plus or minus to create their own addition or subtraction problem:

  

And, here are the girls:

These are what the small white boards look like: 

And, finally, a full class view of everyone engaged and learning.  The test was today and I still need to correct them.  They finished rather quickly which always makes me nervous.  They either knew it all or didn't know anything.  Hmm.....

On Friday, we will start our unit on Quadratics and again, I have mashed together different ideas from blogs I read to have the kids watch short videos before I even teach it.  I will share that in a blog over the weekend.  I think it will be a hit!

Good job!  Off to correct those tests!