Math Mammoth Light Blue Series
User Guide, Grade 1

This document has the following sections:

Basic principles in using Math Mammoth Complete Curriculum

Math Mammoth Complete Curriculum is not a scripted curriculum. In other words, it is not spelling out in exact detail what the teacher is to do or say in a specific lesson. Instead, Math Mammoth gives you, the teacher, various tools for teaching:

• The two student worktexts (part A and B) are the most important part of the curriculum. These contains all the lesson material and exercises, and INCLUDE the explanations of the concepts (the teaching part) in blue boxes. The worktexts also contain some advice for the teacher in the “Introduction” of each chapter.
  
  The teacher can read the teaching part of each lesson before the lesson, or read and study it together with the student in the lesson, or let the student read and study on his own. If you are a classroom teacher, you can copy the examples from the “blue teaching boxes” to the board and go through them on the board.
• There are hundreds of videos matched to the curriculum available at https://www.mathmammoth.com/videos/ . There isn't a video for every lesson, but there are dozens of videos for each grade level.  You can simply have the author teach your child or student!
• The “Introduction” part of each chapter (within the student worktext) has a link list to various free online games and other resources on the Internet. These games can be used to supplement the math lessons, for learning math facts, or just for some fun.
• The student books contain some mixed review lessons, and the curriculum also provides you with additional cumulative review lessons.
• There is a chapter test for each chapter of the curriculum, and a comprehensive end-of-year test.
• The worksheet maker allows you to make additional worksheets for most calculation-type topics in the curriculum. This is a single html file. You will need Internet access to be able to use it.
• You can use the free online exercises at https://www.mathmammoth.com/practice/
  This is an expanding section of the site, so check often to see what new topics we are adding to it!
• Some grade levels have cutouts to make fraction manipulatives or geometric solids.
• And of course there are answer keys to everything.

How to get started

Have ready the first lesson from the student worktext. Go over the first teaching part (within the blue boxes) together with your child. Go through a few of the first exercises together, and then assign some problems for your child to do on their own.

Repeat this if the lesson has other blue teaching boxes. Naturally, you can also use the videos at https://www.mathmammoth.com/videos/ 

Many children can eventually study the lessons completely on their own — the curriculum becomes self-teaching. However, children definitely vary in how much they need someone to be there to actually teach them.

Pacing the curriculum

The lessons in Math Mammoth complete curriculum are NOT intended to be done in a single teaching session or class. Sometimes you might be able to go through a whole lesson in one day, but more often, a lesson might span 3-5 pages and take 2-3 days or classes to complete.

Therefore, it is not possible to say exactly how many pages a student needs to do in one day. This will vary. However, it is helpful to calculate a general guideline as to how many pages per week should be covered in order to get through the curriculum in one school year (or whatever span of time you are allotting to it).

The table below lists how many pages there are for the student to finish in this particular grade level, and gives you a guideline for how many pages per day to finish, assuming a 200-day school year.

Example:

Grade level	Lesson pages	Number of school  days	Number of days for tests and reviews	Number of days for studying the student book	Pages to study per day	Pages to study per week
1-A*	121	98	8	90	1.34	6.7
1-B	126	102	8	94	1.34	6.7
Grade 1 total*	247	200	16	184	1.34	6.7

The table below is for you to fill in. First fill in how many days of school you intend to have. Also allow several days for tests and additional review before the test — at least twice the number of chapters in the curriculum. For example, if the particular grade has 8 chapters, allow at least 16 days for tests & additional review. Then, to get a count of “pages/day”, divide the number of pages by the number of available days. Then, multiply this number by 5 to get the approximate page count to cover in a week.

Grade level	Lesson pages	Number of school  days	Number of days for tests and reviews	Number of days for studying the student book	Pages to study per day	Pages to study per week
1-A*	121
1-B	126
Grade 1 total*	247

*This count excludes the 8 pages of Kindergarten review.
 

For comparison, here is a table for all the seven grades (the decimals are rounded):

Grade level	Page count	Number of days in school year	Number of days for tests and reviews	Pages to study per day	Pages to study per week
1st grade	247	200	16	1.3	6.7
2nd grade	287	200	20	1.6	8.0
3rd grade	321	200	20	1.8	8.9
4th grade	353	200	16	1.9	9.6
5th grade	372	200	16	2.0	10.1
6th grade	324	200	20	1.8	9.0
7th grade	422	200	20	2.3	11.7

Now, let's assume you determine that your student needs to study about 1.3 pages a day, or about 6.7 pages a week in order to finish the curriculum in a year. As you look over each lesson, keep in mind that sometimes most of the page might be filled with the blue teaching boxes, and very few exercises. A student might be able to “cover” two full pages on such a day. Then some other day you might only assign one page of word problems.

Also, the student might be able to go through the pages quicker in some chapters.  For example, when studying the clock, the large clock pictures fill the pages so that one page does not have many problems.

When you see a large exercise set (lots of similar practice problems), feel free to only assign 1/3 or 1/2 of those problems at first. If your child masters the topic with that, then that is perfect! If not, you can always assign him/her the rest of the problems. You can also use these unassigned problems for review at a later time.

In general, 1st-2nd graders might spend 25-40 minutes a day on math, 3rd-4th graders might spend 30-60 minutes, and 5th-7th graders 45-75 minutes a day. If your child finds math enjoyable, he/she can of course spend more time with it! However, it is not good to drag out the lessons on a regular basis, because that can then negatively affect the child's attitude towards math.

Working space and the usage of additional paper

The curriculum generally includes working space directly on the page for students to work out the problems. However, feel free to let your students to use extra paper when necessary. They can use it, not only for the "long" algorithms (where you line up numbers to add, subtract, multiply, and divide), but also to draw diagrams and pictures to help organize their thoughts. Some students won't need the additional space (and may resist the thought of extra paper), while some will benefit from it. Use your discretion.

Some exercises don't have any working space, but just an empty line for the answer (e.g. 200 + _____ = 1,000). Typically, I have intended that such exercises to be done using MENTAL MATH.

However, there are some students who struggle with mental math (often this is because of not having studied and used it in the past). As always, the teacher has the final say (not me!) as to how to approach the exercises and how to use the curriculum. We do want to prevent extreme frustration (to the point of tears). The goal is always to provide SOME challenge, but not too much, and to let students experience success enough so that they can continue enjoying learning math.

Students struggling with mental math will probably benefit from studying the basic principles of mental calculations from the earlier grades. This article gives you a few such principles, but to study all of them, one would need to go through all the earlier grade levels of Math Mammoth curriculum, and find the lessons that list mental math strategies. They are taught in the chapters about addition, subtraction, place value, multiplication, and division.

Using tests

For each chapter, there is a chapter test, which can be administered right after studying the chapter. The tests are optional. Some families might prefer not to give tests at all. The main reason I have provided tests is for diagnostic purposes, and so that homeschooling families can use them for their record keeping. These tests are not aligned or matched to any standards.

In the digital version of the curriculum, the tests are provided both as PDF files and as html files. Normally, you would use the PDF files. The html files are provided so that you can edit them (in a word processor such as Microsoft Word or LibreOffice), and change the numbers or he problems in it, in case you want your student to take the test second time.

Remember to save the edited file under a different file name, or you will lose the original file. If this happens anyway, and you wish to go back to the originals, backup files are provided in a folder called /backup-copies/.

The end-of-year test is best administered as a diagnostic or assessment test, which will tell you how well the student remembers and has mastered the mathematics content of the entire grade level.

Using cumulative reviews and the worksheet maker

The student books contain mixed review lessons which review concepts from earlier chapters. The curriculum also comes with additional cumulative review lessons, which are just like the mixed review lessons in the student books, with a mix of problems covering various topics.

These cumulative reviews are optional; use them as needed. They are named indicating which chapters of the main curriculum the problems in the review come from. For example, the review titled “Cumulative Review, Chapters 1 - 4” includes problems that cover topics from chapters 1-4.

In the digital version of the curriculum, the cumulative reviews are provided both as PDF files and as html files.  Again, the html versions are editable.

Both the mixed and cumulative reviews allow you to spot areas that the student has not grasped well or has forgotten. Another sign that the student has not understood a concept or skill is if he/she cannot do word problems in the curriculum that require that concept or skill.

When you find such a topic or concept, you have several options:

1. Check if the worksheet maker lets you make worksheets for that topic (for example, conversions between measuring units or equivalent fractions).
2. Check for any online games and resources in the Introduction part of the particular chapter in which this topic or concept was taught.
3. If you have the digital version, you could simply reprint the lesson from the student worktext, and have the student restudy that.
4. Perhaps you only assigned 1/2 or 2/3 of the exercise sets in the student book at first, and can now use the remaining exercises.
5. Check if our online practice area at https://www.mathmammoth.com/practice/ has something for that topic. We are constantly adding more exercises and games to this.
6. Khan Academy has free online exercises, articles, and videos for most any math topic imaginable.

Frequently asked questions

Please read the FAQ at the Math Mammoth website.

Contact the author

In case of any further questions about the curriculum (but please first check the FAQ!), you can contact us at www.mathmammoth.com/contact.php .

I wish you success in teaching math!
Maria Miller