A Typical Week

Monday-Thursday-Warm-ups

Each class starts with an all content warm-up. I, personally, use Countdown to STAAR warm-ups because they cover the entire year's content. This way, students get exposure to the entire curriculum all year. When they finally get to the content being taught at the end of the year, they have already had repeated exposure to it, so have some foundation of understanding. This way, they start the year understanding there will be new information they will learn throughout the year. They are not expected to know it all at the beginning of the year. They have bubble sheets that the students track their own progress all year, as well.

Friday-Challenge Day

On Friday, we start the class with our Friday Challenge. These are chosen mostly based on time. When we have more time available, our Friday Challenge can take up most of the class period. Other weeks, we might have to quickly squeeze one in, and the challenge is a quicker one (notice I did not say easier...). Friday Challenges are only given in 5-day weeks. If it is a short week, we do not have a Friday Challenge.

Throughout the week...

THINK Activities

When my teaching partner's son entered middle school, she explained that they start each math week with a THINK Activity. They work on it all week and on the last day they go over it. It is a finishing activity that all students are expected to participate in (not always expected to get it right-but expected to show they are thinking about the problem). I instantly thought this was a great idea (it helped that the school is in our vertical team and I thought it would help prepare students for the next step).

THINK Activities are given to the students on Monday. We go over them in class on Friday. Students are expected to work on them the entire week when they are finished with an activity. These are multistep problems that truly get the kids to think about how to solve the problems. I get these from an OOOOLD book I have The Problem Solver 6. I recently looked it up and they are, thankfully, still available.

A few points about THINKs:

• The first week, we go over all the strategies and solve 2 THINK problems a day.
• They do not check with me-they check with each other. It makes them more aware that they could be wrong and increases mathematical communication.
• They must have something on their paper on Friday. Even if it is just rewriting the information. They need to show they have thought about the problem.
• As the year goes on, the THINK activities become less challenging. But, I NEVER tell the kids that. I tell them they are all at the same level, they are just getting more used to solving challenging problems. There are so many benefits to this. The "bright" kids will usually figure out the problems no matter how challenging. But, when one of your struggling students gets to a challenge and is able to solve it-it is the most powerful thing ever!