Classroom Routines occurs in Grades 3-5, while Ten-Minute Math is for Grade K-2. Even though the title is different, some of the routines are the same and the purpose of this time is consistent across the grade levels.
Let's take a look at why Classroom Routines/Ten-Minute Math is an essential part to our daily math lesson and a few strategies that will support our routine time is really 10 minutes (and not turn into a 30 minute mini-lesson).
Overview of Classroom Routines/Ten-Minute Math
Adapted from Implementing Investigations:
Classroom routines are a critical piece of the review and practice that is built into the investigations curriculum. These short, 10-15 minutes activities provide daily practice and review that support and balance in-depth work of each curriculum unit. They are introduced as a session activity and are then used outside of math time (e.g. during morning meeting, just before or after lunch or recess, or at the beginning or end of the day) or integrating into the math lesson as the first 10 minutes of the 70 minute math block. Classroom routines offer ongoing skill building, practice, and review to support students understanding and retention key mathematical ideas, reinforcing the work of previous units and helping students increase the repertoire of strategies for mental confrontation and problem-solving.
Let's take a quick glance at the various routines across the grade levels.
Classroom Routines in Investigations3
Additional information about Classroom Routines and Ten-Minute Math can be found in Part 4 of the Implementing Investigations manual.
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Classroom Routines
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Ten -Minute Math
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Kinder
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Gr 1
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Gr 2
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Gr 3
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Gr 4
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Gr 5
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Attendance
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Build It
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Fact Fluency
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Closest Estimate
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Closest Estimate
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Closest Estimate
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Calendar
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Quick Images
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How Many Pockets
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Counting Around the Class
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Counting Around the Class
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Guess My Rule
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Counting on the Number Line
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Start With/Get To
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Quick Images
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Guess My Rule
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Practicing Place Value
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Order of Operations
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Story Problems
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Tell a Story
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Today’s Number
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Practicing Place Value
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Quick Images
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Practicing Place Value
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Today’s Question
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Time
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What Time is it?
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Quick Images
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Quick Survey
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Quick Images
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Today’s Number
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Today’s Number
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Today’s Number
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What Time is it?
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What Time is it?
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You can see from the table that there are some routines that are done at each grade. This consistency supports students as they engage in the routine again and again with deeper content as the move from one grade level to the next. Some of the routines are common math routines that are discussed in other instructional resources. For those familiar with Number Talks: Helping Children Build Mental Math and Computation Strategies, the routine Quick Images will be familiar. While investigations3 takes a slightly different approach to Quick Images, it is perfectly fine to adapt the routine for your students as use both approaches.
A couple of other resources that I really love for the K-2 classroom, is the It Makes Sense series. There are some routines describe in these two books that are similar to the routines we are using in Investigations3.
Certainly it is not necessary to have these books in order to implement your Classroom Routines/Ten-Minute Math, but if you have these available or you are familiar with these books, go ahead use them!
One of the main differences between the approach in these resources and the Classroom Routines/Ten-Minute Math from Investigations3 is using the routine as pure mental math.
One of the resources that I think is really useful is the hand signals. These hand signals allow for students to participate in mental math while informing you, the teacher, where they are at in their thinking process. Using thumbs up, thumbs sideways, and showing the number of fingers to match additional strategies communicates whether students are done, need more time, or have more than 1 strategy. Click here: Hand Signals PDF
