Math made easy…yeah right!

Working the curriculum  Essential components  Daily common core review  Teaching tools  Visual learning bridge  Guided and independent practice  Small group tasks  Timed tests

Daily common core review  Great for seeing where students are at with content outside of the current topic.  About half the time these lead into the ensuing topic lesson..but it is not always easy to see the connection  Are ideal for a source of a mini lesson (Ex) in a review last year students were given triangle questions…half the class struggled with them…so that day I made a note..the next two days I did some mini lesson work on triangles to help refresh/teach that concept  Can be easily graded with activotes

Teaching tools  These vary depending on the topic discussion  If there is not one indicated, at the very least have students take notes on the back side of the daily common core review or have them create an organizer to help

Visual learning bridge  It is great that there are 3-5 minute video lessons to help with each…however don’t feel like you have to go through it click by click…and on the same token some should be viewed twice to make sure students are with you…completely depends on the content  I suggest clicking on the write-over on your active inspire so you can take notes and have the students write on the video presentation to make it more personal  Also the students should have the page in their books opened so they can have an easy reference during the visual learning bridge

Guided and independent practice  Spend a significant amount of time on guided practice  Use worksheet problems as an additional resource if necessary  With independent practice a close read of the problem is a great idea to help students decode a problem. Sentence by sentence read and take notes on what is being asked.  Do not assign more than 10% of grade for homework

Small group work  In our time of diminished copy ability, many of the small group tasks can be completed using notebook paper or with markers and small socks cut up to use as erasers.  Small group work is differentiated into 2 levels of difficulty..I often struggled with some of the level 2 stuff while my gifted students did not…that is telling about what we should be putting in front of them I think

Other resources  Study island has many great math resources  Brainpop is also great although very expensive to purchase an account  Interactive manipulatives is a great site I have bookmarked through the south jax I keep bookmarks…lots and lots on there

A word on assessments  Don’t wait until Spring to have students practice extended response math problems.  My approach is to build them into topic assessments and to gradually ramp up the expectation of the work by my rubrics

pacing  One of the most important factors in effective teaching is the amount of content covered. In general, students of teachers who cover more material learn more than other students do. Barr 1987, Barr & Dreeben 1983  This does not necessarily mean that teachers should teach faster; obviously there is such a thing as going too fast and leaving students behind.  Yet research on instructional pace does imply that most teachers could increase their pace of instruction. Good 2011  From Bob Slavin’s Educational Psychology (2011) 9 th ed.

Importance of math  Most students leave school without sufficient preparation in mathematics to cope with either on-the-job demands for problem-solving or college expectations for mathematical literacy.  Industry, universities, and the armed forces are thus burdened by extensive and costly demands for remedial education.  Our country cannot afford continuing generations of students limited by lack of mathematical power to second-class status in the society in which they live  From Everybody Counts: A report to the nation on the future of mathematics education by the National Research Council  Taken from Laura Sgroi’s Teaching Elementary and Middle School Mathematics 2001