Problem-based Math

The warm-up invites all students to engage in the mathematics of each lesson and either:

• helps students get ready for the day’s lesson, or

• gives students an opportunity to strengthen their number sense or procedural fluency

These activities are the heart of the mathematical experience and make up the majority of the time spent in class.

Teachers launch an activity, making sure students understand what the problem is asking them to do before students begin working on the problem and have the math tools they need during the problem.

Students synthesize what they have learned in that particular activity.

Each activity includes flexible options for teachers to support students in solidifying topics from the activity, often including questions to ask students.

After the activities for the day are done, students should take time to synthesize what they have learned. This portion of class should take 5–10 minutes before students start working on the cool-down. 

Each lesson includes a lesson synthesis that assists the teacher with ways to help students incorporate new insights gained during the activities into their big-picture understanding

The cool-down task is to be given to students at the end of the lesson and is connected directly to the lesson learning goal.

Students are meant to work on the cool-down for about 5 minutes independently and turn it in. The cool-down serves as a brief formative assessment to determine whether students understood the lesson. Students’ responses to the cool-down can be used to make adjustments to further instruction. 

• Teachers have a set of centers to choose from to create learning experience to meet each student's needs.

• Centers are organized by content focus, and each center has multiple stages

• For grade K, the centers are built into the 60-minute lesson

• In grade 1, there is a whole lesson that is strictly centers at the end of each section.

• For grades 2-5, the centers are designed to be used outside the 60-minute lesson

• For grade 6, centers can be used as supporting prior grade level content of unfinished learning.