Due to the positive responses from my post yesterday on how I approach English, here is one for maths! Maths is way easier to plan for as it is not as dense/broad as English.
I teach maths in the morning, always. We do one page of handwriting or free writing first thing when we come in, then at 9:45 or so we start maths.
I always try to start with a maths game of some sort, and I always use my target board too. The maths games are usually mental maths ones but I will start using interactive whiteboard games more.
I then move on to our word problem of the day. Many children struggle with word problems. I have a power-point with a variety of word problems, and we do one a day. We try to work through it together if it is a difficult one. If we run out of time I ask the children to write it down on a piece of paper and they can come back to it later in the day if they finish their work early.
I then start teaching the new topic. We spoke about this a lot at the seminars over the summer. HOW to actually teach a maths lesson.
I follow this layout:
- I do: I teach the topic/introduce the topic on the maths. I do the problem step by step, using different colours for different steps.
- We do: We do the problems together. The children come up to the board and try the problem.
- Closure: I close the topic on the board.
- You do: The children do their assigned problems without teacher assistance. I let the very able children work away. I move between my differentiated groups, and repeat everything I did on the board with them using a small whiteboard. I give more challenging maths problems to the early finishers while I work with those who may find it difficult to grasp the topic.
That is what I do from Monday to Thursday.
Maths on Friday consists of a short maths test to assess their grasp of the topic, or sometimes maths stations.
As an aside, I teach multi-grade. If you do too, then this may help.
I teach all the children together for the first part of the lesson. Then 5th class branch off into their tasks. I then extend the board work for 6th class. When we have done this, 6th class start their tasks, while I go work with 5th class groups. I then move back and over between the two classes for the final stage of the lesson where I help the weaker groups.