Math Skill Builders for Off-Schedule Days

This stretch of the school year between Halloween and Christmas is filled with exciting days for kids, with more fun and less work as time is made for classroom parties and activities. As a teacher these days can be exhausting and if I’m honest, a little frustrating.  Not because the students are all hyped up and classrooms turn into a loud and messy scene of organized chaos, but mainly because since the entire school day isn’t spent partying, I always feel the struggle of what am I supposed to prepare for students to do in the time I do have with them before all that starts?

When days are cut short due to parties, turkey trots, cookies with Santa, shopping school “holiday stores,” and rehearsals for music programs, you don't really have enough time to plunge ahead in the curriculum with new lessons. And the kids are too distracted anyway! However, there is enough down time that you need to have something planned. Here are some ideas to help you plan for conquering these days while providing meaningful work and activities that will help give your students a little math boost. (Along with some free math printables to give you a head start!)

Review

Think back on the previous weeks of instruction.  Which skills did your students struggle with the most?  Which chapter tests or quizzes yielded the lowest scores?  Identify those skills and review them with your students then provide them with some extra practice problems.  Sometimes just revisiting a skill like this once can transform a student’s ability from novice to proficient or from proficient to master.  Even the students that mastered the skill earlier in the year, may have become rusty when presented with a problem now.  You could also focus on helping students brush up on those foundational skills that they'll use over and over again. The bottom line is, you can’t go wrong here and reviewing these skills benefit all students on some level.  

• Multiplication Facts Practice
• Multiplication Dice Game Printable
• Factors & Multiples Guide & Practice
• Expressions & Equations Guide & Practice

Word Problems

No matter what grade level you teach, putting in some practice in solving word problems is always a good idea.  Word problems are consistently identified as one of the most challenging math skills for students.  Moreover, half of the questions your students will encounter on the math section of state assessments will most likely be word problems. In a study conducted at the University of Texas in Austin, 747 high stakes test released items from grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 were analyzed by a team of expert educators and out of those 747 problems, 92% (690 problems) of them were found to be text-based!

• Guide to Math Word Problems

Calculator Fluency

Break out the calculators and give your students problems to solve!  So many times, as math teachers we double down on making sure that students can correctly calculate problems on paper (rightly so) but assume that they can fluently do so using calculators.  However, this isn’t always the case and students need to practice using a calculator as well.  Don’t forget that beginning in 6th grade most state assessments have a math portion in which students are allowed to use a calculator!

Just because instructional time during a school day is cut short does not mean that the time you do have cannot or should not be used in a meaningful, educational way.  Plus we all know that saying If you don’t have a plan for your students, your students will have a plan for you holds true.  If you need help with finding reliable resources to use, check out what we have available on our website at www.ignitelearningcompany.com! 

PS - Our Math Hero membership is loaded with worksheets and guides perfect for using to review skills. Our digital course Word Problems Unlocked is a great resource that provides evidence based instructional videos as well as worksheets you can use in the classroom to help your students become word problem masters!