Course and Lesson Structure
Course content is organized into eight instructional units, each consisting of roughly four weeks of instruction. Units are subdivided into three topics, each of which includes a sequence of lessons about specific mathematics content. Typically, the first and third topics in a unit provide 6 to 7 days each of instruction on specific themes of mathematics, while the middle topic addresses youth development ideas and builds students’ algebraic thinking capabilities via engagement in solving non-routine problems.
Each daily lesson is designed for an 80-minute double-block period. A typical lesson has the following components:
- Daily preview. Outline of day’s activities that explicitly describes what students will be doing and the purpose of each activity. The preview helps students organize their thinking for the lesson and see the connections among lesson components.
- Opener. A 5-10 minute daily warm-up routine for transitioning into class work. The goal is to help focus students on the upcoming lesson and access relevant prior knowledge, and to provide teachers with formative assessment data. The warm-ups typically involve mathematics problems involving concepts or skills needed for the lesson but may also involve questions for private reflection and/or partner discussion.
- Core learning activity. 25-35 minutes of instruction to promote learning of essential algebra content. Activities feature high-cognitive-demand tasks and are typically situated in real-life context. Online animations of mathematically-important aspects of the tasks are utilized. Tasks are augmented by use of the student activity book to maximize time on task (e.g., so that students do not have to copy problems, tables, etc.) and regular use of routines that provide ways for students to organize and access the content, e.g., routines to support frequent formative assessments (such as use of whiteboards).
- Process homework. 10-minute partner routine to review the previous lesson’s homework. It promotes communication among students about mathematics and their mathematical thinking, and also teaches students to take ownership of their own learning. Students process their mid-unit and end-of unit assessments with their partners using an expanded version of this routine.
- Consolidation activity. 20-25 minutes of instruction designed to review/repair prior knowledge required for upcoming lessons (i.e., preview the algebra content and correct misconceptions), provide additional opportunities for practice to deepen conceptual understanding and skill proficiency, and/or review online and pencil-and-paper assessments. These are typically designed as partner activities.
- Lesson wrapup and introduction of homework. 5-minute routine used to highlight important ideas and activities in the lesson which is accomplished through previewing the lesson’s homework assignment.
- Staying sharp. A daily set of six short problems that provides distributed practice with algebra and prealgebra skills. Staying Sharps are also used to preview upcoming content; i.e., they help students review relevant prerequisite knowledge and also provide formative assessment data to teachers about their students’ knowledge of perquisite concepts and skills. Staying Sharps are part of the daily homework assignment.
- Homework. Roughly 30 minutes of additional work outside of class time to help develop students’ confidence and abilities to work independently in mathematics and to provide additional practice with important concepts and skills.