Daily Math Skill Review

Often, the time for review for district or state tests rolls around at the same time of year that you’re ready to stop introducing new topics. It feels like you’ve taught so much and you’re not sure if the students remember everything. At this point in the year I just want an activity that we can do everyday that I know will review concepts for students.

I realize that we don’t have time to review everything. We have to choose what to review and make sure students get a refresher of topics from the course of the year. Some of the topics we’ve studied throughout the year are prerequisites for other concepts, and some of them are target skills.

To review our learning throughout the year I created a 10 day daily review activity for my students. In this daily math review I wanted to focus on specific grade level math skills and not overall conceptual understanding. During the rest of the class time, we’ll do a variety of deeper practice with specific concepts or play review games to solidify their learning (see: “10 Ideas for 6th Grade Math Test Prep,” “End of the Year Activities in the Math Classroom,” and “18 Math Review Games.” 

When I created this review system for my own class I chose topics that have the following criteria:

• Easy to review
• Quick to answer 
• High likelihood that a quick refresher will stay in their brains longer

What does a day look like?

Each day students answer 12 questions about the same 12 topics. If approximating irrational numbers is question number 1 on the first day, then it will be question number 1 every day. Each question should take less than a minute to complete, making this an ideal activity for the start of class. Of course, on the first day it takes students longer to complete, but as the days go by they get a lot faster.

Each day is printed on one double-sided page. I have my students grab one and go with it. If you need a digital version, though, this is also available in an all digital version built in Google Slides.

Students get started answering the questions on each of the 12 topics the best that they can. You may want to encourage them to use their notes as they’ll be reviewing concepts they may not have thought about in a while.

Going over the answers

Each day after students complete the answers you’ll go over the answers with them. Students mark their answer as right or wrong. I like to have students talk over their wrong answers with a partner. They can share insights or misconceptions with each other. This gives them a chance to see where they went wrong.  

Also, as the teacher you can look for trends and give as much feedback to the whole class as possible. Hopefully, if you address an issue that many students have with a concept, the next day students will stop making that mistake. 

Tracking Progress

Students will track their progress over the 10 days of practice. As you can see in the picture below they shade in the questions they got correct and leave the questions they got wrong blank. 

You can help guide students to see which concepts they understand and which ones they are struggling with. Encourage them to look for and identify patterns in their results- which topics are they strongest on? Which are causing them trouble? Students can track their own individual improvement overall, as well as on each specific math skill reviewed. They love to see their own improvement, and it’s a rewarding way to reflect on their progress.

As a teacher, these individual charts help you know which concepts to focus on during your review. You’ll see trends among the whole class as well as trends for individual students. When most students miss a question, you know that you need to use your class review time to review that topic with a whole group. However, when only a few students struggle with a skill, you know who needs that specific topic reviewed individually or in a small group.

I use the first day as a pretest and the last day as a post test.  Most students see a lot of improvement from the pretest to the post test which really builds their confidence.

Grade Level Daily Math Review

We’ve created these reviews for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. They are one page per day, or we have them as a digital review in Google Slides. Each of the grade levels include 12 topics. These pages aren’t editable, but they’re ready to just print (or share) and go. Let’s look at what each grade level has to offer.

Here’s a look at the student tracking sheet for each grade level. You can see the 12 topics that are reviewed. You’ll notice a variety of topics from equations, geometry, statistics, number systems, and proportions. 

6th Grade Daily Math Review:

7th Grade Daily Math Review:

8th Grade Daily Math Review:

Middle Grades Daily Math Review Bundle

If you teach all 3 grade levels you might want to look into the middle grades daily math review bundle. You’ll have 10 days worth of review for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade.  

More tips for using these daily review units 

• These daily reviews work great for back to school time. You can use the 6th grade review at the beginning of the year for 7th graders, or the 7th grade review for the beginning of the year for 8th graders. This gives you a chance to review the previous grade level and gauge where your incoming students stand.
• Use the data from how you students are doing on the daily review to help you know what topics to study. We also have review activities that coordinate with these daily review bundles. They’re fun, interactive activities that dig deeper into each of these skills.  
• These can be used in a general math class or in an intervention math class. They’re a great way for an intervention teacher to help support test prep in the grade level math class.

Trying daily math review in your class

Above all, these daily review sheets are very easy to implement in a middle school math class. Basically, all you have to do is print and go. Each day you for 10 days you need to set aside 15-20 minutes to complete this practice.  The students will get faster at answering the questions as the days go by.

This daily math review process works really for students because they get to track their progress and make decisions about learning. It’s great for teachers because you can pinpoint what your students need to work on. It’s perfect for test prep, end of the year review, or getting to know your students at the beginning of the year. 

So go ahead- check them out and let us know what you think!

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