A Whole New View on Math Practice

You know how it goes: You teach the lesson then assign 30 problems for the kids to practice out of the book. Maybe it's a worksheet that came with your teacher's manual. The kids are dreading 30 of the same problem over and over for myriad reasons. The smart kids find it redundant. The middle of the road kids find it boring and the struggling kids want to give up before they start because you've pretty much asked them to climb Mt. Everest without oxygen.

Rather than assigning 30 problems they'll never finish, I started running my math practice as such. This idea is stolen from another teacher and I don't even remember who at this point, so thank you. Once the direct teaching portion of the lesson concluded, I would ask would was still completely lost (usually those Mt. Everest kids). They would meet me at a separate table for a small group reteaching and practice with teacher support. Everyone else would start practice. However, I would not give them 30 problems. They had two choices: they could do 6 problems I selected which encompassed the concepts from the lesson at low, medium, and high levels or they could do all 15ish problems (usually I would assign 1-30 even or odd). I would then put out my teacher edition answers with a marking pen. The kid who finished first with 100% correct answers would be in charge of the pen and grade everyone else's work.

I know what you're thinking: Why wouldn't every kid just do the 6 problems? Well, here's the catch. If a kid chose to do those 6 problems, he/she would have to get 100% on the first try or he/she would have to do all the problems, not just the evens or odds, but ALL the problems 1-30. So a kid had to have some serious confidence to give that a shot. As for cheating, when that first kid got 100%, he/she would have to bring it to the teacher to double check to make sure cheating wasn't going on. However, that is the only interruption during that small group time because once you have a kid who is checking work, he/she is the person the kids go to for checking. If someone turns in a paper and gets a certain number wrong, let's say 5, that kid gets sent over to the teacher to get help in small group.

As a side note, when it came to homework, I'd assign A, B, & C homework. If a kid wanted an A, he/she had to attempt both sides of the homework page. If he/she wanted a B, it would be side 1 of the homework and a C would be side 2 of the homework only. You could adjust this by grouping your kids and just assigning them A, B, or C instead of letting them choose.