The first few weeks of school are so important. Starting out with great math activities for the first week of school is critical. Like my dad once told me, “Start as you mean to go on”. Simply put, start strong, and continue strong. That goes for everything. Start with high expectations, start with engaging lessons and activities, and build your classroom culture and environment so it is the best possible learning environment for all students during your math time.
Before we get started with the nitty-gritty teacher talk, if you are working on transforming your math classroom into a space where students actively engage in their learning to practice fluency and math concepts, grab my 10 Free Math Activities. No gimmicks, no sales, no nonsense with this freebie- just one way I can help with making math hour the favorite part of the day for every student!
Why Is the First Week of School So Important?
The first week of school is so important because classroom routines are being established. Students are learning all about your expectations and making critical judgments about whether they will like certain subjects, and whether the work is too hard or too easy.
As your classroom culture and climate becomes established, students are gauging how much effort you expect. I once coached a teacher on how to get her students to spend more time on math projects. They seemed to want to race through it so they could check some invisible box that said “Done”.
Reflecting on her practice, she came to the conclusion that she had trained them right from the very first day to quickly finish their worksheets so they could have free time to draw, read or write. That’s not to say that sometimes we may want our students to finish a worksheet with review skills quickly, but students also need to regularly experience delving deeply into math and being cognitively engaged for longer periods of time.
Why Are Math Activities an Important Part of Math Class?
First, when we are talking about math activities, it can cover a lot of different things. It can be a warm-up activity, a whole group activity, a center, a challenge problem, a project, or a performance task. It would not be a worksheet to practice skills or problem solving following a lesson.
Including math activities daily helps to:
- Break up the routine schedule of teach and practice.
- Provide highly engaging content.
- Add spice to the math hour.
- Help students make connections.
- Provides skill practice.
- Provides opportunities to review previously learned content.
- Provides opportunities for expanding math vocabulary.
- Provide an opportunity for formative assessment.
- Help students gain confidence.
- Supports students with number fluency.
Working math activities into the first week of school will signal to students just how much you expect students will be highly engaged and critical thinkers.
The True Purpose of Math Activities
The first week of school you are taking every opportunity to observe your students, learn about their strengths and what supports they may need. In math, we are specifically looking for foundational skills that will support them for the upcoming grade level work. Can they add, and subtract? Are they fluent with numbers – for example, do they know what comes halfway between 30 and 40?
Every math activity that students participate in can give you a wealth of information about their skills and prior knowledge. You can learn so much about their disposition and feelings about math when you say to students “Okay, we are going to try something new today.”
What Math Activities Should I Include During the First Week of School?
Number of the Day
This is something very familiar to most teachers. Select a different number each day and have students explore that number in various ways. Can they write it in expanded form, identify the tens and ones, identify if it is odd or even? This activity helps students to familiarize themselves with different aspects of numbers.
The downside of this activity
Most likely students have already done a number of the day in a previous grade. Too many “number of the day” activities can become stale and routine.
The Fix
One way to spice this up is to have students select their own number and create clues. Students pair up with one another and try to guess their partner’s number based on the clues.
Problem of the Week
An interesting problem that is related to students’ lives can be a conduit to rich problem solving while giving the teacher an insight into students’ current skills. Students can work independently or collaboratively on solutions and this routine can promote critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and perseverance.
The downside of this activity
It is difficult to know how to adapt problems for all students before you are able to know what support they will need. Students often need to learn the skills of collaboration and that requires a lot of frontloading by the teacher.
The Fix
At the beginning of the year, I like to give students a choice of whether they want to work individually, or in a group of two or three. Students who need more support can pair with another student who can talk about the problem in depth or their problem solving strategy. For very authentic collaboration and opportunities to learn from each other, I will give students time to solve the problem independently, and then share solutions or, more importantly, problem solving strategies with each other.
Math Scavenger Hunt
Math is all about choice. How a student decides to solve a problem, what strategy they want to use, how they like to work, how they want to represent the problem, and on and on. One way to signal this new autonomy with math is to create a math scavenger hunt. The directions might be, “You must find and solve a division problem, a multiplication problem, and a problem with fractions. I create 3-4 problems from each category on a note card and “hide” them around the room. These vary in difficulty level and students can see there is an A version (easy) B version (a little difficult) and a C version (challenging!). They can keep looking until they find the one they want to solve.
Things to Remember About the First Week of School Math Activities
No matter what activities you choose, it’s important to take the time to talk about the activity and how you envision it “rolling out”. In other words, classroom management. Remember, students need to know exactly what you expect so they can start off on the right foot. Be sure to discuss things like:
- Where do they find supplies when they need them?
- What do they do when they finish the activity?
- Is it okay to talk to others about it or is it supposed to be quiet, independent work time?
- Where do they put their work when they are finished?
- What do they do when they are “stuck”?
Give yourself and students some grace here. The first week of school is so busy and goes by so fast. There is so much to think about and learn about each other. If you introduce a routine, an expectation, or an activity that just doesn’t work, change it. Make it work for both you and your students.
Another important thing to remember is to adapt these routines and activities to suit the specific needs and abilities of your students. By incorporating these math routines into your classroom, you can create an engaging and supportive math learning environment from the beginning of the school year.
For free back to school math activities, check out Jennifer Findley’s Free Back to School Math Activities
For ideas on student-created math tools check out my recent blog post 5 Powerful Student Created Math Tools
