Use Desmos as your pacing guide. No need to rearrange units!

Planning Your Math Block Structure

What Does a Good Math Block Look Like?

The answer is....It depends. It depends on:

the learning intention
the expectations
students' background knowledge
student's cognitive, social, and emotional development and readiness
where you are going next
on the day, some days its effective to start with collaborative tasks, other days, might need to start with students talking, other days might need to start with independent work

Much of teaching is dependent on responding to student data in real time.

(adapted from "Visible Learning for Mathematics")

Then How Do You Plan Your Math Block?

Step 1: Make Time For Math Daily!

1st-5th grade Math instruction should be 75-90 minutes EVERYDAY (yes even Thursdays), 60 minutes for kindergarten.

This maybe chunked before and after lunch or specialist. Smaller chunks of time throughout the day is not a bad thing. Plan for a total of 90 minutes everyday.

Write down all the times you can't control (lunch, recess, specilaist, library, reading interventions ect.)
Fill in 90 minutes worth of Math throughout each day.
Look for small 10 minute chunks of time for math routines or math talks.

Step 2: Structure Your Daily Time!

Ask yourself, What is the purpose of the lesson? Choose your own adventure, based on your classroom needs, select a drop down to learn more!

EVERYDAY! Number Sense Routine AND closure to formatively assess for future lessons.

Choose routines or number talks to fit into 10-15 minutes times, or start your math block with one daily! Click here for Routines!
Choose a closure or exit ticket to help guide you for future lessons, these will give you insight on what your students know. Click here for ideas!

New learing, that they need to explore first, to show you what they already know.

Choose a task or problem for them to solve without much instruction from you. Check out these websites or the supplemental slides on the standard documents for ideas. Or use the brain builders from MyMath.
Engage pairs or triads in the problem (pausing the whole group for discussion as needed)
Collaborative whole group work in gorups of 2-3.
Debrief the task with the whole group discuss strategies and solutions.
This time could take 30-60 minutes.

Guidance and teaching from the teacher.

Read your standards in the standard documents.
Plan lessons using MyMath and the supplements provided on the standard documents.
Use the CRA model to teach a hands on lesson to whole group or in small groups.
For more spcific lesson planning and unit planning click here.

Practice time to apply knowledge.

Determine what skills need to be practiced
1. Skills from previous grades.
2. Skills you taught earlier this year.
3. Skills you are currently working on.
Decide if this will be part of stations, whole group or independent work.
Use the supplemental slides for station ideas and or MyMath games and reteach pages.

Individualized instruction for meeting student's specific needs.

Small-group lesson structures are appropriate for considerably differentiated lessons. During small group instruction, student groups should not experience the exact same task. It should be differentiated. Small-group lessons are good for extending or reteaching a concept. They should not be used merely for better classroom management. There should be no more than two-groups during the small-group lesson structure.
More on planning for small groups , click here.

So, what should math look like in CKSD?

Page updated

Report abuse