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.
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