EASY MATH CLASS MANAGEMENT
CHECKLIST
Ø Give students daily Easy Math practice as they come into room. They work independently for 5 minutes while teacher takes care of other business.
Ø After 5 minutes teacher walks through the class and offers help for about 2 or 3 minutes. Teacher will only answer questions that are easy (non-complex). Complex or more difficult questions will be saved for afterwards at the chalkboard so all the students can benefit from the explanation.
Ø Teacher will spend 5+ minutes at the board answering questions and generally instructing students as best he/she can with the items on the EM sheet. The following guidelines have proven to be very effective:
Ø Maintain student attention and do best to go over easy, non-complex items that are very short in nature (i.e. Place the invisible decimal in 26, or show students how to line up decimals in an addition problem that is written in a horizontal format, or to multiply fractions- “remember top times top and bottom times bottom.”)
Ø Go over critical elements via explanation in more complex problems as time allows.
Ø Impart meaning to the learning as is convenient and as time allows.
Ø Score the Easy Math Sheet orally. Teacher will call out the answers. Students will sometimes keep their own paper to score. At other times teacher will require students to exchange papers for scoring.
Ø Teachers will record the student’s raw score in gradebook, etc.
Ø Teacher will give the student bonus points added to 9-weeks grade. Bonus points seem to work well, making the activity non-aversive, and keeping the students looking forward to the daily activity.
Ø Always try to keep the activity a positive one and remind the students that they will learn up to 5 or 6 times as much using this procedure.
