Loving Daily 5 Math!

Last year I felt I wasn't reaching all my students as best as I could during Math whole group instruction. The struggling students constantly needed help and support, while the students who understood the concepts were done quickly, and the ones who needed just a bit of guidance didn't always get what they needed to be successful...so bring on Daily 5 Math!

I decided to have four things the students could choose from each day: Math By Themselves, Math With Someone, Math With Technology, and Math Games. There is also scheduled time to do Math With the Teacher throughout the week. I begin each Math block with a short 10-15 minute mini-lesson to introduce, build upon, and reinforce the major concepts for the math work they will be doing during Math With the Teacher and Math By Themselves.

What I love so much about Daily 5 in Language Arts is the student choice, so I wanted there to be an element of choice for the students. To make sure the students were held accountable each week, the students are expected to complete the Math By Themselves activity that I have created. The activities sometimes are worksheets from the Pearson Math Grade 2 workbook, Math Journal prompts created by Reagan Tunstall (found here and here), and Math Think Tank Cards. When they have completed the activities in their Math Journal and the round of Daily 5 isn't over, the students play an earlier finisher game that I have taught them.

To stay organized and "get started right away" each student has their own Math By Themselves folder with a hundreds chart, bingo chips, counters, dot cards, two dice, and their Math Journal. So far this is all they have, more things may be added as I progress through the year.

Stay tuned for Math With Someone coming next week!