Happy New Year! It’s the second time in the school year to get a fresh start and look at the resources that you are using in your classroom. A while back, I shared my favorite resources to teach reading (check out My Favorite Resources to Teach Reading), so I figured I would share my favorite math resources. Here are five math resources that I use in my classroom on a weekly basis…

1. Daily Leveled Math Curriculum from TAH

This resource from The Autism Helper is a year-long leveled curriculum that focuses on teaching basic math skills. Each level is set up in 8 units with pretests/post tests, anchor charts, 20 practice pages per unit and a review unit. It is highly structured and gives multiple practice opportunities. This curriculum can be used in a variety of ways- at a teacher run station,at a paraprofessional ran station or an independent station (just make sure it’s on the students independent level). I like this resource because it gives a good base to teaching math in the classroom, it teaches students how to use anchor charts and offers multiple practice opportunities. You can find the Daily Leveled Math Curriculum on The Autism Helper’s Teachers Pay Teachers page. It is available in 5 levels (0.5, 1, 2, 3, and 4) and in writer and non-writer editions. 

2. TouchMath Money

I actually found this resource in my classroom and use it to teach students how to count mixed groups of coins. Each coin has a certain number of “touch points” based on the value of a coin-a nickel has one, a dime has two and a quarter has five. The touch points are used as a visual prompt to help the student count by fives when determining the value of a mixed set of coins. What I like about using TouchMath Money is that there is no grouping coins or constant skip counting switching-if a student sees a dot on the coin, they count by fives and only switch the way they are counting (to counting by ones) when they see pennies in the group of coins. While TouchMath is a curriculum that is a little more expensive, there are many resources for using the TouchMath money strategy on Teacher Pay Teachers.  

3. Kumon Math Workbooks-Word Problems

Many of my students are working on solving word problems as one of their math goals and it is important for me to find a variety of different word problems that match what a student might be working on in a genera education setting. These Kumon Word Problem Workbooks are affordable, and take students through solving word problems from start to finish. The grade 1 book starts with just addition, then moves to subtraction before combining the two. It gives students multiple practice opportunities and allows you to teach the different key words for each operation. Here is the Amazon link to the Grade 1 Kumon Word Problem Workbook-click on it and you will be able to view the other levels as well on the Amazon site.  

4. Saxon Math

Saxon Math is also a daily spiral curriculum, meaning that different skills are taught simultaneously rather than in individual units (e.g. money, time), giving students practice opportunities each day to apply different skill subsets. Each page has a guided practice that the teacher is meant to complete with the students and the students can complete the back side of the sheet individually-either as homework or during independent time. What is great about the independent practice side is it closely matches the guided practice side, but uses different numbers or quantities to ensure that the students demonstrate their understanding. Another great component of Saxon Math is that math fact practice pages are are also included. I purchased my Saxon Math Student Workbooks on Amazon and make copies. Each grade level has a part 1 and part 2 workbook, which costs about a total of $40-$45 per grade level, for the two workbooks. I currently use the grade 1 and grade 2 Saxon Math Student Workbooks in my classroom. Here is a link to the Saxon Math Student Workbook Grade 1, Part 1 on Amazon. After you click it, you should be able to find part 2 and other grade levels of the Saxon Math Student Workbook. 

5. Math Meeting from TAH

Math Meeting from The Autism Helper is a leveled daily lesson to reinforce basic functional and academic math skills in order to build independence. Math Meeting was created as  higher level morning meeting that is highly structured and repetitive. Math Meeting is on The Autism Helper’s Teachers Pay Teachers page. Math Meeting comes in three levels (1.0, 2.0 and 3.0) and includes materials for the board, reference pages, and two versions of the student response page. Student fill in corresponding information based on the meeting board pieces. Thorough instructions for setup and use are included.   Math Meeting can be used as teacher or paraprofessional run group lesson.  It can also be adapted to use as a independent station as the students master the concepts taught in a certain level. What is great about the Math Meeting is the repetition and consistent structure. This allows students to understand what is expected of them and makes them focus on learning new math concepts. For more information about how to use Math Meeting in your classroom, check out my blog post Features of Math Meeting. 

I hope you got some ideas of different resources to use for teaching math to your students. Please share the math resources you use in your classroom below!