An Apple For The Teacher: Daily Math Review

My Daily Math Review has been one of the most effective resources in helping my students to practice and retain all of our math standards throughout the year.

About 5 years ago our district implemented what we call "Balanced Math" guided primarily by the book 5 Steps to a Balanced Math Program by Larry Ainsworth and Jan Christenson.

One of the steps is a Daily Math Review process. I would have to say that this has routine has probably had the biggest impact on my math instruction by far. I love the fact that I am able to review math skills throughout the year, and that my students who struggle get repeated exposure to the material and can actually learn and retain it!

What is most different about this spiral review than other ones I have seen or purchased in the past is that it is entirely student driven, and is true review of what they have learned rather than a mish-mash of skills that you may or may not have taught yet.

The authors recommend that you give the students 5 types of math problems each day of the week. The problems should be the same type for the whole week. Each day they practice place value, addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, measurement and data, and geometry. At the end of the week, the students take a quiz with 2 problems of each of the types of problems they have been studying all week. If 85% of the students pass a particular section, you move on. However, if less than 85% master the material, it stays on the Math Review for the next week. You can see from the picture below a few areas that my students needed extra practice with a few weeks ago.

If a few students struggle with a concept, you simply pull them for small group instruction.

The Process:

Independent Work: When we start our math block, my students spend about 10 minutes independently completing their math review sheets for the day. I circulate the room providing individual or small group instruction as needed.

Processing and Correcting: After the students have had some time to work independently, we come together as a class to review and correct them. Sometimes I have students share their strategies, and other times I provide instruction. I almost always add to the work by stretching their thinking. For example, we might round and estimate to see if our answer is reasonable.

The Product:

When I first stared using the Daily Math Review process in my class five years ago, the hardest part for me was the time involved in preparing the questions and finding questions to ask. Well, luckily for you, I have put together a package to make your life easier if you would like to try Daily Math Review in your class!

This set comes complete with full instructions for implementing the program in your classroom.

It also includes fully editable sets of papers so that you can change the problems to suit the needs of your students. How many times have you used a set of spiral review that features skills that you haven't introduced yet? How many times have you wanted to change a problem? Now you can!

But... I also know that us teachers can be incredibly busy and may not have time to create problems for their students. So... I have included 36 weeks of ready to go math review and assessments for you to use as is. I have based the problems on areas where my students have struggled in the past. PLUS - these pages are completely editable!