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When you only have a small bit of time to plan for and implement your math intervention organization strategy, managing your math intervention materials can be the difference between having a successful group meeting and not meeting at all on any given day.
How do you organize math intervention materials? This organizational strategy is what worked best for me. It is a strategy that evolved and was tweaked over time but ultimately worked best for me. Use this blueprint as your starting point and tweak and adjust for yourself!
Print and Copy a Full Unit At a Time
There’s nothing worse than finding that the copier is down in the morning when you need recording forms for your lessons in the afternoon. Rather than copying one day at a time, I started my math intervention organization each unit by copying ALL math intervention materials ahead of time.
- Pre and Post Assessments
- Lesson Materials
- Independent Practice Activities
- Tickets Out the Door/ Progress Monitoring
Organize Paper Materials By Group
Once your materials are copied, the battle is only half won. When you find yourself with 20 unexpected minutes to meet with a group you don’t want to waste a minute of that time looking for the stack of papers you copied last week. Setting up your math intervention organization by group solves this problem!
For each math group, prepare a folder. In the left-hand pocket, clip together sets of assessments. If, for example, you have 5 students in your group you would clip together 5 pre-assessments, 5 post-assessments, and 5 of each ticket out the door.
On the right-hand pocket, clip together sets of independent practice activities. For a group of five students, I might copy 6-7 of each activity so there are extras if a student needs to spend more time repeating a particular activity.
I tuck my tracking form for assessments and daily notes in the center of this folder. Each day when you pick this folder up, the daily materials and your updated notes and assessments will be handy and ready to go!
Organize Teacher Materials In One Space
For each unit you may have a TE, written lessons or hands-on materials you will be using with the students. Keep all of these materials (as well as your folder of copies) together in one space.
Using a plastic paper or craft bin is perfect for this job. You can easily store your folder with all of your copies, your TE and any hands-on materials for the unit close at hand.
Again, when you find yourself with a few minutes to pull a group aside to work with them, you will be SO thankful that your math intervention organization is contained and you have only one bin to grab. Everything you need to teach is at your fingertips ready to go!
Math Intervention Organization for Students
During any given math intervention unit your students may work at different paces on their independent practice work. Providing each student with their own dedicated math folder can help to keep these materials organized. I prefer to store these folders in a magazine-style holder with one magazine holder dedicated to each group.
To prepare the folders, place a “Still Working” label on one pocket of the folder and a “Done” label on the other pocket. It’s that simple! As your work time comes to a close each day your students will simply file the paper according to whether they are still working or done.
The next time you come together, based on your observation of student exit tickets, your students can continue working on their “still working” activity if they needed more practice or can move ahead leaving that activity purposefully unfinished if they have demonstrated an understanding of the skill.
As an added benefit, on days when your students finish early, they can easily grab an activity to finish from the “not done” side of their folder. I also tended to use “still working” activities on days when I needed to give some sort of an interview, 1:1 assessment or when I needed a bit of time to work individually with a student.
Keep Assessment Data Separate
When you need to work on report cards, progress notes or attend a student data meeting you don’t want to have to go rifling through 20 separate math folders to gather your data. Instead, have a landing zone where you can keep your assessment artifacts all in one space.
I preferred one binder with a tab for each student. In the student’s tab you could find all of their exit tickets, pre and post-assessments, and progress monitoring probes stored chronologically.
During a unit, I would keep teacher notes and any assessments (pre/post/exit tickets) directly in my materials folder. At the end of the unit, I would transfer each of these materials to my assessment binder so that they could be easily accessible to me in the future.
Related Resources
Let’s simplify your math intervention plan even futher with these ready-to-use math intervention units! For each unit pre and post assessment, small group lesson plans, independent practice activities and daily tickets out the door are all at your fingertips and ready to print and use!
Check them out here!
Kindergarten Math Intervention
1st Grade Math Intervention
2nd Grade Math Intervention
3rd Grade Math Intervention
4th Grade Math Intervention
