There's a Plan for That

In one of my teaching years, I had a student named J (whose name was changed to protect his information). J had recently moved in from another state with a pre-existing IEP. In this plan, the amount of time he spent in a whole group instructional setting was minimal, mainly for socialization with his peers rather than for his academic instruction. As the school year got underway, it became apparent that some changes needed to be made to his accommodations. Eventually, a new IEP was created, and he remained in my class most of the time. 

Here’s what you must remember about J: his previous school kept him in a small group setting most of the time, and he was a fourth grader who was essentially unaware of routine classroom procedures, such as raising his hand. When he first came to me, he would follow me around the room, saying, “Teacher, Teacher, I have a question.” Initially, he also had social struggles relating to his peers. Academically, he was also very far behind the class. 

By the end of the school year, J was able to get up in front of his entire class and lead them in an on-grade-level word problem, start to finish, including estimating to help judge the reasonability of his answers, as well as checking his work using a second strategy to confirm that his answer was correct. 

Was he on grade level in his final testing? No. J was still a student who had academic struggles. But the change that I was able to see in J throughout the year was amazing. He left my classroom at the end of the year feeling confident enough to say that he was GREAT at math. Math turned into his favorite subject because he felt empowered and confident. 

Working on a problem of the Day was the game changer in getting the ball rolling to help develop that confidence. 

What is the Problem of the Day?

A problem of a day is, as the name would lead you to believe, a math problem that you work on each Day. To be more precise, it is a word problem, not just an equation math problem. I tended to do them at the beginning of the math lesson because they helped the students get their brains engaged and focused on the upcoming lesson. 

These word problems could be related directly to the standard taught during the math lesson that Day, but often, they weren’t. I used these as a way to continuously practice and prepare for end-of-year testing through repeated exposure all year long. 

Why is the Problem of the Day significant?

It’s easy for an educator to feel that once your student has mastered a skill, like multiplying or dividing, your job on that unit is done, and it is time to move on. When we have this mindset, we need to remember that students can frequently decipher the pattern of defaulting to division when they solve a word problem in the middle of a division unit lesson. 

Unfortunately, the end-of-grade testing that students undergo mixes different skills and standards with no rhyme or reason, so choosing to divide because the last problem was division isn’t sufficient to get an answer correct. 

Throughout the year, I have always noticed at Parent-Teacher Conferences that parents are surprised to hear that their child is struggling with a standard based on test results because their child never seemed to have any problem with it on homework. 

This is once again a reflection of our tendency to dump all our efforts into the standard we are teaching when it is being taught and then try to throw them all back together at the end of the year in a final review right before testing. 

What tends to come out with this strategy is that teachers are frustrated and confused because the kids who knew how to multiply suddenly get every multiplication word problem incorrect. 

Repeated practice determining operations and solving a mix of word problems is your best friend in combating this issue. 

There isn’t much time to do this, so one problem daily can be powerful. It doesn’t eat up all your instructional time, but it keeps the strategies and thoughts for approaching determining operations relevant. 

To read more about determining operations, check out this blog post HERE. My Free Resource Library also includes a determining operations worksheet freebie. Make sure to join my email list for exclusive access! 

How do you facilitate your Problem of the Day?

The ultimate goal is for your students to be able to solve the problems correctly and confidently on their own. I wanted my students to not only know how to solve the problems but also have a strategy for determining whether their answer was reasonable and a way to check and see if their answer was correct. 

Starting out, this is a tall order, so it’s important that you scaffold your students to this level of confidence and independence. 

Depending on the supplies available at your school, the amount of time you have, and your students’ ability levels, it may be easier to print out either a mini workbook each week with the problems of the Day for the week on it, strips of paper with just the problem on them that can be glued into student notebooks, or even have the students hand-write the math problem into their notebooks. 

Ultimately, it’s your choice how you provide the word problem; I do think it is beneficial to have them write it down somewhere that it can be kept and referred back to because these problems make a great resource as the year goes on for your scholars to refer back to and use to help make decisions on how to solve their future problems of the Day. This can also be an excellent resource for parents who want to help support their children in determining operations in word problems because it will help show the types of word problems students should expect to see and provide strategies and examples for how to approach solving them. 

Remember, being able to recall previously discussed information, go back in a notebook, and find it again to confirm what they remembered is a great learning tool—not “cheating.” If your student can remember they solved a similar problem and want to look back and check, I would encourage it! 

Once the problems are accessible for the students to solve, I would give them a few minutes to work independently on them. After a few minutes, I would let them talk quietly to their shoulder partner about their work for another minute or two, comparing answers and strategies and seeing if they could come to a consensus on the final answer. 

Then, I would bring all the students back together and help them work through the problem, calling on students to answer questions and guide me in my work. 

On the paper, we would write out what we “know” about the word problem (the relevant facts told to us), what we “want to know” about the word problem (the question), whether it’s a single-step or a multi-step word problem, and “how to solve” the Problem (which operations/operations to use). 

Once we have that information identified, I would start by using the necessary operation (let’s say addition for the ease of this example). I would use the numbers given, and we would use estimation to help get a rough idea of what number we should expect as our final answer. If the problem were for us to add 36+21, then my estimation would be 35+20=55. My answer should be pretty close to 55; if I do all my math and my answer is 8, then I would go back and double-check my work because it was so far off from my initial expectation based on my estimate. 

Students may be more rigid with their estimations and want them to follow proper rounding rules, in this case, the 36 would be rounded to 40, so you would expect 60 to be the final answer. This option or response is acceptable for the Problem of the Day estimation portion. Use this portion to intentionally review rounding rules and help reinforce that concept regularly since it tends to be a struggle point for students. 

Once you have found your estimated answer, I will walk the students through a strategy for solving the equation. 

Lastly, we would check our answer. There are always lots of ways to check your work. Still, I found the two most valuable strategies to encourage students to use were to solve the same operation using a different approach or to use the opposite operation, such as subtracting your answer from one of the pieces to find the other original piece if you’re checking an addition word problem. 

To check 36 + 21 = 57, you could either add 36 + 21 with a different strategy, decomposing the numbers, and then add together all of the pieces if you used a standard algorithm or solve on a number line. If you wanted to check this Problem using subtraction, you would take your answer 57 and subtract the 21 from it, and if your math was correct, you should have 36 as your final answer. 

In the beginning, these problems will take up more of your time. However, as the school year progresses, the students become very used to the routine, and this goes much faster. 

During the independent work time and the shoulder partner debrief, I would walk around to understand who understood what to do and which students were lost in the sauce. 

Around the middle of the school year, I would start to select students who consistently get their math problems right and are more extroverted to get up and lead the class on how to check our answers. They would be the “teacher” in the problem instead of myself. 

As time passed, I started to select other students who understood the problems and what to do but were more introverted to get up and lead. 

The goal was to have everyone come up and lead the math Problem of the Day at least once by the end of the school year. 

Logistical Questions:

• What do I do with my students who usually get the answers wrong?

By the time you’re at the point in the year that you have students getting up to lead, you know your kiddos. You already know those who tend to struggle and what they tend to struggle with. I pay special attention to those students as they are working. Sometimes, I help facilitate their understanding with short questions and conversations to help guide their work in the right direction. Remember, you can choose your speaker for the Day AFTER they have independently attempted their work. I would wait until I knew a student had solved a problem correctly and then select them. It’s important to remember that you want students to be built up by this activity, so crushing a student who struggles in math by putting them in front of an audience with an incorrect answer isn’t beneficial. 

• What happens if my student, who is the teacher, gets up there and needs to be corrected?

This is going to depend on the student and circumstances. As mentioned in my last point, you want to avoid knowingly putting a student up there with the wrong answer. Sometimes, students will change their answers as they are up their lead (especially if they need more confidence about what they did to get their initial answer). These are great learning moments. Before diving into students leading the questions, I would have a class talk about expectations for how to behave. Remember, each student will get up and talk, and nobody wants to be laughed at when they make a mistake. Conversations about how to politely disagree with an academic answer, how to encourage each other even if a mistake has been made, and how to show respect for the speaker will all be helpful when addressing errors. In addition, the speaker will have a great learning opportunity because it will help solidify how to solve what they did incorrectly in the future. The moment will likely feel more significant than just getting an answer wrong on a worksheet. 

• What do you do if your student is feeling shy and wants to avoid getting up and speaking?

I always spoke to the speaker I chose directly before announcing them to the class as the teacher. If they were hesitant, I would talk through their fears or hesitations. I would have them walk me through their thinking aloud on how they solved the problem so I could reinforce the belief that the answers and solving methods were correct. I would also remind them that as the “teacher” at the time, they could call on friends to help them if they got a little stuck halfway through their explanations, and a friend could help jump in and give them the boost they need to finish the word problem. If they still didn’t feel comfortable, they were allowed one “pass,” where I would move on to a different student for the Day. But with the understanding that it would be coming back to them again soon to be the speaker. Nobody was allowed to opt out permanently; although this may look different in your classroom, I can only speak for what worked with my scholars when they were with me.

Having a problem of a day quickly grew to be everyone’s favorite time in the math block because it was a time when they felt empowered to take control of their learning. Students were provided a platform to share their thoughts (putting your thoughts into words can be a great learning tool for solidifying your understanding). It also is fantastic to see how encouraging and kind your students can be to each other. The high fives claps, and good jobs melt your heart. I had one student say to a leader who had gotten something wrong, “It’s okay; we all make mistakes sometimes. I’m proud of how well your lesson is going so far.” This was coming from a nine-year-old. The support your students will show for each other will blow you away. 

Go ahead and start them in your classroom; what’s stopping you? Feel free to comment below on how Problems of the Day works for you and your class!