This summer much of our focus in this class has been focused on writing lessons and thinking about ways of improving our students mathematical thinking.  This is a very important discussion and I have learned a lot through this process.  Though it may seem obvious, this is my purpose in teaching math.  I want my students to become better problem solvers, and to learn to think deeply about math.

I preface all of this, because I foresee this next academic year being more challenging for me to accomplish this goal than in any of the previous years.  As my title to this post suggests, at West Valley High School this next year we are transitioning back to a “traditional” delivery schedule of 55 minute class periods.  For the past three year, my entire teaching career, we have had 78 minute periods.  Needless to say, this is a dramatic change.  It also must be noted that we are transitioning from trimesters to semesters, so there is really no loss in “contact” time with students.

During these past years I have seen great value in much of the daily routines that we part of a 78 minute period (entry task/warm-up, time to answer questions from the previous homework, time to teach a complete lesson, and often some time to allow the students to begin working on their homework).  I realize that in losing 23 minutes, some things are going to need to change.  So my question is this: for those of you with experience teaching with 55 minute periods, or any of you with helpful ideas, what is the best way to use the 55 minutes I will have to optimize my students’ math performance?

-Aaron