Sample Lesson - The Daily Half-Dozen - Paper-and-Pencil Computation Drills

The Michigan Essential Goals and Objectives for Mathematics Education and the NCTM's Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics call for students attaining a reasonable level of paper-and pencil computation. The enclosed program of daily drill will help students in grades 2-8, maintain their written computation skills at this reasonable level.

Regular (frequent) brief drills are effective in maintaining computation skill. These drills should follow instruction and are not, in themselves, a method for learning a skill.

The drills should be held daily at a time outside the main mathematics lesson for the day. That is, the drill is not to be part of the day's mathematics lesson and should fit into a convenient 15-minute time slot.

The drills should be conducted in such a way as to be a positive experience for the learners. Make up of missed drills is not critical. Immediate scoring and record keeping is necessary for the reinforcement aspect of the drill. The teacher should implement a fast and consistent scoring and record keeping system.

Each of the 150 daily drill cards contain six exercise areas; two exercises per skill. Mixed drill is more effective than drilling each day on the same skill. Three skills are mixed each day. The skills should parallel the content developed during the year, i.e. whole number work early, and fractions/decimals later.

In addition to the daily drill cards, the program also offers three quarterly performance tests. These tests follow drill card numbers 50, 100 and 150. They are designed to measure performance on the skills which have been drilled.

While the drills just cover paper-and-pencil computation they also include the use of related vocabulary. Of course, calculators are not allowed, but mental computation may be used by some students. Showing the work is not required.

Teachers may try a variety of drill administration formats: the overhead projector; copy the exercises on the chalkboard; hand out individual copies of the drill card; etc.