Number of the Day – A Daily Math number routine to practice key math concepts

Do you have a Daily Math Routine?  What do I mean by Daily Math?  Something that you do every day with students that breaks numbers apart and puts them back together to develop their mathematical thinking.  Something that explores numeracy and has a set routine.

When I taught Kindergarten we had calendar time.  I would add in different activities to our calendar time, depending on the skills that we needed to review, but the basic format of our calendar time was consistent and regular.

When I taught a 1/2 combo, I no longer did calendar.  I know, *gasp*, but calendar is not in our standards and I’ve never found it that useful as students get older.  The kids know the days of the week and all I need to do is write the date on the board and they have it, for the most part.

What I do instead, is what I call Daily Math.  It’s morphed a bit over the course of the year.  It’s only October, and I’ve changed it three times.  That’s a good thing.  It means the students are learning and progressing.

Google Slides Version

The Daily Math Number of the Day resource has been updated with a Google Slides version. Check it out here:

Daily Math at the Beginning of Our Year

When I first began our Daily Math routine in first and second grade, the beginning of the year looked like this:

I know, blurry iPhone photo where you can’t see anything!

Our Daily Math Routine

What was our routine?

The gist of it is, each day a different student is the “Daily Math Student”.  That student chooses a number, writes the word, expanded notation, tally marks, addition and subtraction expressions, base-10, the value, filled in blanks, and counted by 10’s with that number.  

We also filled in the 100’s chart.  Each day, we chose 3 numbers and figured out where they belonged.  I also added in greater than / less than.

Reflection on Our Original Routine

This method worked well, but there were a couple of problems with it.  I found that not all students were paying attention and were accountable.  It was also on the board in one area of my room that not all students could see at the same time.  The Daily Math area was also a permanent structure and I was loosing precious board space.

How Our Daily Math Routine Changed

When we began our intensive work on addition, I changed our Daily Math to a page that can be inserted into students’ whiteboard sleeves.

We used the document camera and each day the “Daily Math Student” would fill it out.  I started with 10 and worked my way back and forth 9, 11, 8, 12, etc.  This worked great to help students see number relationships and went along well with our number talks.  

We’ve been using it for about 3-4 weeks now, and most students are ready for something else.  Most of my first graders still need this type of work, but my second graders are ready for new things.

Classroom Examples of Daily Math

At the beginning of the year, it takes a little while to train the students, like it does with all new procedures.  After each student has had a turn being the “daily math student”, the time it takes to complete this page becomes less and less each day.

Not all of the photos below are from the same day, so the numbers and pages will be different.

This is the “Daily Math Student” sitting under our document camera completing the day’s page.

This is the same students’ work projected on our screen.  What you see above our screen is our Number Line, which we use every day when we make “jumps to 1000 on our Daily Math page.

The daily number line really helped students learn to use a number line for multi-digit addition and subtraction.  It is similar to the practice we do in our Roll and Spin Math Games, where students practice developing fluency with number lines. 

This is a student completing his page on a different day.

This is an example of an easier number.  I’ve switched the star icon for a cloud in more recent versions of the page.

What is Included in the Daily Math Resource

Included in the Daily Math Resource are four different levels.  Each level has several different versions where the “count by” is arranged horizontally or vertically and the number line is included, included with 10s or not included at all.

• Number Sense 0-99
• Number Sense 100-1000
• Addition & Subtraction
• Time & Money

Some of the more difficult skills are present on all the versions, but I’ve varied the pages enough to change it up a bit as the year go on.

How to Purchase Daily Math

You can purchase the Daily Math resource on my website or on Teachers Pay Teachers.