Basic Skills Math

BSI Math Overview

Throughout the school year, students meet one-on-one with their classroom teacher or a Basic Skills teacher to do a brief progress check on their math skills. 

The results inform classroom teachers of what students have learned, and what students need to be taught.  The results are also used to identify students that may need additional support services.

A student’s eligibility for BSI math services is determined after reviewing data from the BSI Diagnostic assessment(s), the I-Ready Diagnostic assessment(s), and teacher feedback.

If your child is found eligible for services, you will be contacted by the curriculum department.

The Math BSI Team works on building fact fluency.  Fluency has three components: 

• Efficiency- children need to have a quick way to obtain the answer.

• Accuracy- they need to get the right answer.

• Flexibility- if they cannot figure it out, they have another way to approach the problem. 

Our BSI Team works to build fluency through number sense.  The four number sense relationships we focus on are:

• Spatial Relationships- recognizing how many without counting by seeing a visual pattern.

• One and two more, one and two less- this is not the ability to count on two or count back two, but instead knowing which numbers are one or two less or more than any given number.

• Benchmarks of 5 and 10- ten plays such an important role in our number system (and two fives make up 10), children must know how numbers relate to 5 and 10.

• Part-Part-Whole- seeing a number as being made up of two or more parts.