George Lucas Educational Foundation

Boosting Math Skills With Daily Practice

Adding an extra period of math every day gives students an opportunity to review what they’ve learned and strengthen their mathematical thinking.

October 18, 2023

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Every class starts each day at P.S. 249, the Caton School, in Brooklyn, with a 45-minute period of math practice—from kindergarten to fifth grade. In the first half, students review concepts they learned previously, and then they jump into solving the problem of the day, a complex multistep problem that relates to their current unit. Students work independently, then review their work together as a group, which allows them to make their thinking visible, share out different ways of approaching the problem, and use all their math vocabulary.

All of this is data-driven and crafted by the school’s teachers: Grade-level teacher teams work together each week to assess what standards students need more work on, using the previous week’s math review worksheets, quizzes, and exit tickets as sources of data. They then design math review worksheets for the week ahead, as well as pick one extra-juicy problem for each day.

This additional period of practicing math is paying off: The Caton School was the top math performer in their district in the 2022–23 school year, with 76 percent of students proficient or higher, an increase of 15 percentage points over the year before—and doubling down on math has built a community of enthusiastic and creative math thinkers there.

Schools That Work

P.S. 249 The Caton School

Public, Urban

Grades PK-5

Brooklyn, NY

At P.S. 249 in Brooklyn, New York, about half of the student body are from Spanish-speaking countries—but what might be considered a language challenge for some has been turned into an opportunity here. The school’s dual-language Spanish program starts in kindergarten. Nearly every teacher is trained to teach English as a second language, and consistent with best practices in ELL, standards remain high despite understandable gaps in language comprehension. Through a robust math curriculum, engaging science days, and a new way of doing professional development that frames classrooms as teaching labs, the neighborhood school not only brings out the best in kids—it has become a high performer over the past decade.

Earned an America’s Best School Award from the National Center for Urban School Transformation in 2023.
Received a Blue Ribbon Award for Exemplary Performance from the U.S. Department of Education in 2021.
Named a Reward School for 2 years in a row (2018–19) for high academic achievement—with no significant gaps between subgroups—by the New York Department of Education.