Thanks for visiting. I'm so excited to be at Twitter Math Camp this week. I'm sharing a strategy called "Math Maintenance," a ten-minute warm-up that is a spiral review meant to help students keep sharp on skills from throughout the year.
Here's the PowerPoint:
This is an example I've used with my Math 8/Maryland Algebra I class.
And here's a template to help you get started.
How do you start class each day?
Mathematically yours,
Miss B
What are your honest thoughts about using MM as homework? Then the first 5 minute of class, 5 students post their work for the rest of the class to see and check their work.
ReplyDeleteI think you could certainly do this. Parents would know what to expect for homework each day (which is a huge plus). I would definitely make sure to carve out some time on Monday in class to make sure students know where to find notes/resources on each kind of problem, perhaps even reformatting the paper so the six columns are Notes, Examples, Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs. That would mean no weekend HW, or combine the notes/examples to include Friday homework. Thanks for taking the time to read the PPT and ask about it!
DeleteLove your math maintenance! Creating something like this is on my summer to-do list - yours inspires me to get busy at it since school starts in a few weeks! Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Beth. Let me know if you have questions as you get started.
DeleteI like the idea of tracking the skills with a google document! I'm going to try planning 3 of the 5 warm-up activities to be 'math maintenance', (mental math and estimation 180 for the other 2). We are in a 55 minute block, so I'm thinking that 5 problems may be too much. What do you think? Thanks for the idea!!
ReplyDeleteI checked your blog and it looks like you teach Geometry and Pre-Calc. Is that right? I think of those classes as having more lengthy problems than the Math 8/ Algebra I that I teach, so I would try to decide how many minutes you'd like to spend on MM and then determine about how many questions that would be for your average students. For a 55-minute class, I might try 4 total questions instead of 5, unless you expect to put one or more very quick questions in. That might get the time commitment down to about 8 minutes. You could consider doing alternating weeks of mental math or estimation 180 if you have more skills to fit in. Feel free to adjust during the year if you need more or less. There's no reason you have to always have the same number of skills in a week (other than that you won't hear, "But why do we have 5 this week when last week we only had 4?")
DeleteThanks for your comment! Let me know if I can be of further help!
Thanks for your suggestions Kathryn! I made some decisions and created a template for my Do Now's this year - http://rmankel.wordpress.com/2014/08/07/do-now-plan-and-template/
DeleteOh how I wish I'd found this earlier in the summer, or that I had attended your session at TMC. I'm incorporating a schedule of Math talks for my warmups this year, but I really like the idea of using this as homework/practice. I want to give smaller but better independent practice assignments and I think this format would help me to be much more intentional about that. My 1st two units are already printed and ready to go, but I will try using this to plan out my 3rd unit.
ReplyDelete