Math as a Teachable Moment: Weekly Set Up

OK, I wasn't as quick posting this as I would have liked but. . . better late than never. :)

 The math program I use comes with a suggested yearly plan for each grade level that addresses all the prescribed learning outcomes (standards) for my province.  I keep the monthly plans in the math section of my teacher organizer/daybook and refer to them often, just to make sure I am staying on track.  The plans are by no means a prescribed program (it's actually very open-ended, allowing for what actually happens in the classroom and based on student needs/weaknesses) but I find it's nice to have some kind of frame to work with.

We have an hour long daily math block, which is split into 3 parts, allowing me to incorporate a number of activities into each math session. In planning the week, I choose 3 out of 5 possible activities to do each day.  I find this works really well in: 

1. keeping students focused and 
2. allowing for the diversity of learning strengths and interests in the classroom

The 5 activities I choose from are:

1. Problem Solving (PS)
2. All the Facts (AF)
3. How Many Ways (HMW)
4. Weekly Graph
5. Games/Project

This year the weekly schedule looks like this:

Monday        - Weekly Graph, AF, HMW
Tuesday        - PS, HMW,  Game/Project
Wednesday   - PS, AF, Game/Project
Thursday      - PS, AF, HMW
Friday           - PS, AF, HMW, Game

I'm pretty happy with the way it's set up but I think I would switch the weekly graph to a different day and start with problem solving on Monday, as the problem on Monday can be a springboard for the rest of the week's problems.  And I'm not happy with the way the game/project activities are going. . .or not, as the case may be. <sheepish grin>  Needs some tweaking in that dept., FOR SURE!

Friday activities are used for assessments.  I mark the PS, AF, and HMW activities and record them in my Math Assessment & Evaluation Binder.  Each student has a binder pocket where we keep the samples of their work.  I'll write about this in a separate post.

Next time, I'll go into more detail about each of the activities and how it looks in the class and what I'd like to change/keep the same. . .there's always room for tweaking. :)

Note: Please ignore the grid below...I tried to remove it from my post but can't seem to.  Not sure why, I can't??