Hi there Cath,
Hope the weekend was a good one.
I’ve gone through all my articles but I can’t find anything specific.
For what’s it’s worth here are my thoughts on balance within a given week of
teaching maths:

  • In the end the first priority is to present the kids with engaging and
    worthwhile activities/experiences – I don’t care if it’s the 4 different content
    areas in 5 days AS LONG AS THOSE LESSONS ARE
    ENGAGING/CHALLENGING/WORTHWHILE.
  • If it was me I’d go for doing a unit of work sequentially. if you allocate 10
    lessons for addn and subtn then teach those 10 lessons in a row – most times
    the kids benefit from building on the knowledge and skills gained from the
    previous lesson.
  • If you have planned well then topics suit different weeks better than other –
    for example, if you are about to go on camp then the week before the camp
    should be allocated to a mapping challenge based on getting to the camp from
    the school and this would need a number of sequential lessons. You drive the
    planning and timing of units of work not the other way around.
  • Revision I’d rather see as something you plan for at the beginning of each
    term. If you’re planning term 2 then allocate 5 days for revision – the first week
    of the term works very well for this. Do that for each term (2, 3 & 4) and you will
    find you don’t need to allocate one day of every week – better for you (the
    teacher)as it frees up more time and for the kids. 
  • Planning for maths shouldn’t be ”have a guess and let’s go for these 2 days
    of something now” – it should be done with a view to integrating maths
    wherever possible – within maths content areas and to other areas of the
    curriculum. Avoid 2 days of multiplication and 2 days of area/perimeter when
    you can put these 2 topics together over 3 or 4 days and kids see the
    connections and benefit accordingly.
    Anyway, just my thoughts CT.