First of all, I taught my main lesson and made sure to keep it short and sweet. I picked today’s lesson because I knew the content was primarily review and that the students should be able to do the guided practice in pairs without any support from me.  After the mini lesson, I gave the students the bullseye math sheet and explained how it worked. The rules? Start from the center and complete the tasks in the rings.  Students had to finish each ring completely before moving to the next.

The tasks?  The center of the bullseye contained the required pages that accompany our math series.  Students were told to work on it independently and then to partner check their work. Partner checking is one of my favorite techniques because I require that the two people end up with the same answers so they have to debate back-and-forth and try to resolve any discrepancies.

The next circle? We have been struggling working with accuracy and precision so I asked students to use one of the many ways we have learned to practice big number computation by getting three problems correct of each operation.  Many students love to write problems for each other to solve, and others chose to work independently by rolling dice to make problems. The goal? Draw circles each time They try a problem and put an “x” in the circle if they get it correct. They need three “x”‘s in each operation before moving to the outer circle.  All work was checked on calculators.

The outer circle had four separate problem-solving activities for students to choose from. They could do some measurement task cards that were introduced in the previous unit… an open ended problem-solving activity related to summer… Some challenge cards… Or an algebra thinking packet that we have in our challenge folders.  Most students were able to spend a good chunk of our math block working on these higher level activities.

My students loved working at their own pace and being able to accomplish a ton of math either alone or in pairs. I felt good that they were getting some precision practice and some problem-solving practice as well as finishing the work needed for today’s lesson.  Not only that…I got five one-on-one assessments finished!  

Hope all of you have a fabulous extended weekend…the end is in sight!  By the way–a hearty “congratulations” to

for winning my end of year giveaway!  I don’t know about you, but I LOVED reading about everyone’s successes!  We need to do that more often…we have so much to celebrate!  Be safe this weekend everyone…oh wait!  To thank those of you who entered but did NOT win..I’ve marked all these products on sale through the long weekend.  (See the post below for the links) Thanks!