Everyday Counts

Our district requires that we do a daily calendar math program called Everyday Counts. While I hated it at first, I have come to love it. Why? Every single day you do a little bit of a math concept, and then you repeat it. Every. Single. Day. And it cements in the kids' heads. I became a believer when we got to our fraction unit. I had been dreading equivalencies because, for some reason, it's a difficult concept. HOWEVER, because we did a daily decimal for every day of the school year (day one being 0.01, day two 0.02, adding a hundredth each day), and that daily decimal required a fraction and a percent equivalent, we zoomed right on through that portion of our fraction unit. Sold. I began to embrace and love EDC. You can add things to it, make it your own, put a concept in they are struggling with to review every day, you name it. I really enjoy teaching it now.

Every month the elements change a little bit. The patterns on the calendar, the fraction of the day, some months we do measurements, some months mean, median, mode, and range, etc. The worst part is setting up the new month's elements. It takes so much time, but then once it's up, you fly through the month. In preparation for this year, I put all the elements for each month into a zippie bag. I sorted, labeled, zipped, and BAM! I'm ready for EDC this year!

This is the box all the stuff and the book comes in. Idk, I thought you might want to see it.

These are the ginormous zippie bags I found while cleaning out a drawer. They used to hold, can you guess?, desk maps, but I have them stored elsewhere. Try as I may, I couldn't get those stickers off. Oh well! Only I'm going to see them.

I labeled each bag with the month name. The envelopes hold the individual calendar pieces.

This is a picture of the process of sorting through all the stuff, making a list of things I needed to photocopy or laminate, cleaning off old writing from last year, etc.

On the back of each piece I wrote the month or months that element would be needed.

I laminated everything so we could write on them with white board markers.

This is the back of the clock. I wrote the month it is used, and I wrote a tip to myself. The book says to cut out clock hands and move them around, but I thought it was easier to just draw them on.

And there they are! Each month has everything I need. The bag in the drawer has extra pieces and the assessment tool.

Aerial shot. As I'm typing this, I wonder why I didn't write the month on the other side so the "desk maps" stickers would face the back. Oh well. I can easily change that, but not tonight!

And just in case you were wondering, here is part of August's set up. Those pieces, apart from the month and days, stay up all year. I didn't set anything else up yet because I haven't decided if I'm going to use the wall space or the whiteboard for the rest of the elements. I've seen it both ways. If you use EDC, how do you set it up?

Thanks for reading! Keep calm. It's the weekend! Although, talking to another teacher today, I was reminded of this meme. During the summer months, time just melds together for teachers. I can't tell if it's the weekend or Wednesday or what!