Enrichment is a crucial component to math workshop and guided math. Almost every year I have a handful of students who are beyond grade level standards or students who master the standards quickly, and I need to find ways to challenge and enrich those students. Of course I also have students who need remediation, and you can read more about that here. I love using my Enrichment Math Centers to support these students. I use these centers similar to a math menu or choice board. If you’d like to use these centers and activities in your classroom, you can set up whatever criteria you like for the activities: three in a row, four in a column, etc. However, you could also completely skip the choice board portion and utilize the activities on an as-needed basis.
Writing Numbers in Different Forms
The Create Your Own Number System is one of my most creative activities, and it truly requires students to think about our place value system. In the activity, students create a symbol to use for the ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands place. Then, they write numbers using those symbols. This forces students to slow down and think about place value and value of numbers.
Building Numbers
There is an activity students build numbers by rolling dice and represent those numbers in standard and written form. I love this game, because it’s open ended and it gives students choice. You can always add an extra die to have students work with larger numbers or take away a die to have students work with smaller numbers.
Sale Flyer
The Sale Flyer activity is great for addition and subtraction, as well as problem solving and mental math. In the activity, students image they have $5,000 to spend. I provide students with sales flyers from newspapers and magazines and have students make a list of how they would spend the $5,00. To differentiate you could easily change the amount students have to spend or set certain criteria such as: you must purchase at least three items, or no item can be more than $1,000.
Enrichment Math Centers-Multiplication War
Math Enrichment Centers-Playground Design
By far, my favorite activity is Playground Design. In this lesson, students use area and perimeter to design their dream playground. There is a list of playground equipment that students may choose from, but they only have 200 square feet to work with. To enrich this even further, you could add a budget!
Math Enrichment Centers-Graphs and Sudoku
