Keep up with Eureka Math Over School Breaks

If there  is anything we learned from good old year 2020, its that we cannot be afraid to adapt to help our students.

In that time, I know I personally learned many ways to make Eureka math available to my students in any form they needed it. I am taking away now some of those delivery methods and home based routines to use during our long school breaks this year.
 
When students are home for a long break, they tend to get out of routine and some students are prone to regression.

​We plan for this after those breaks. We sometimes lose curriculum time not able to move forward, but instead we are planning a review topic to catch up.

Tap into Workbook Resources
 
I find that there are extra sprints or Practice Workbook pages  at times at the end of a module. These are great to send home for students over the long breaks. They are fluency practice and fun! You can change the directions and students can take their time to complete all of the facts on the page. The students will be excited for this change, because these are usually timed.
 
In the Learn workbook, we are provided with an abundance of problem solving with story problems. These are great review for students, because it ties in a variety of computation practice. Students are reminded to use RDW (the read, draw, write process) in the directions portion of each page.
 
The Succeed workbook provides the instruction page to help explain or remind students how to complete the tasks. This book is designed for home practice! It is a great time to go back and fill in the tasks you had to skip due to lack of time or the extra practice wasn’t needed then.
 
These workbooks are a familiar tool to the students if it is a part of your program daily. Taking home resources from them to complete over the break will help them them to refresh the stills taught and share with families all  they know about math!
 
Management Tip: Instead of sending students home with the entire workbooks with assigned pages, tear out the pages they will need and staple together as a packet.
 

Use Your Digital Resources
 
Digital resources have become a reality to us now! If we want to provide students with supplemental math activities but do have the workbooks or the extra workbook pages, this is the way to go.
 
Using a platform like Google Classroom or SeeSaw is ideal regularly with your students just incase you need to connect with them from home at some point.
If you use Google Classroom, you can create slideshows in Google Slides. You can type up math examples for the students and create text boxes. Then use create an assignment to send it out to your class. They have the ability yo turn in the assignments to you.
 
Create work for the students to completed at their own pace, not bound by due dates. This will give students the flexibly to still enjoy their break from school. They can complete the assignments when it is convenient for them.
  
Type of Reinforcement Assignments
 
These assignments should not be any new material. Students are going to be encouraged to practice and reinforce math facts and problem solving only  using previously learned skills.
 
Even though we have a great amount of choice of where and how to provide home tasks, this should be strategically short tasks in nature.
 
Provide activities that do not take long to complete each task. If students are encouraged to spend as little as ten minutes a day practicing math, they will be more likely to engage in the tasks.
 
Provide Motivators
 
Create a reward system for the students who go above and beyond to complete the assigned tasks. These students are encouraged to take on this practice independently to keep skills fresh. If a student is taking this on by themselves and complete the tasks, they should be recognized.
 
Some students may be looking for an opportunity to make up missing assignments due to lack of attendance or difficulty with certain topics. This may their opportunity to make up work and improve their grade.
 
Provide Support for Families
 
 Being supportive during school breaks does not mean you should be available through phone or email. You can provide support in advance for any activities you provide the students and families. If you are using an online platform, preface the tasks with examples and explanations maybe even some tutorial video clips! If you would like to provide a variety of workbook pages to create a packet, provide a cover sheet in your own words of what tasks you would the students to complete along with some examples as well. 
 
We all want our students to keep current with math even when on extended school breaks. I know this year we are all feeling the we have to get caught up vibe. It only takes a small amount of practice over long periods of time to prevent that break regression!

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I am Stephanie and I have been teaching grades 1-3 for a number of years. I love using Eureka Math to guide my instruction.  I have found this program helpful in making me a more effective math teacher for my students. In my spare time, I enjoy the outdoors and spending time with my family. ​