January 2025 Newsletter
Welcome to the New Year 2025!
We hope everyone had a fabulous winter break! As you start the new year, here are some ideas to ease students back:
Review and Reset the Routine
Use what worked in the fall and change the things that did not work. What did your students positively respond to? Bring more of that strategy into your instruction during the new year. What did they struggle with? Spend some time reviewing the processes and make the necessary changes.
Set new goals
Share new expectations and encourage students to set personal goals. Help your students succeed by explaining your expectations. Teach them how to set personal goals and give them direction on how to achieve them.
Engage in Community Discussion
Have your students share experiences from their break that relate to your topic of instruction. Bring math into it. Have your younger students calculate how often they did something during the break, such as eating a cookie, sledding, watching a holiday movie, etc. Then, have them double the number. For older students, have them calculate the ratio of how many days they slept in to the number of days they were off school.
Incorporate Fun and Engaging Activities
Bring something new to ‘ordinary’ learning activities. For example, when playing math card games, incorporate physical activities. Here are some ways you can bring physical activity into gameplay:

-Turn your math card games into relay races
-Have students practice even and odd numbers by incorporating hopscotch: hop on one foot for an odd number, hop on two feet for an even number.
-For games such as Swim to Ten, make a large game board on the floor and have the students become the game markers
We are here for you
As you get back into your routine, don’t forget that we are here to support you all year long. If you find yourself behind schedule or fresh out of ideas, reach out! We’re here to help make this school year a great success!
Sincerely,
Your RightStart Math partners:
Teresa, Rachel, Maren, Kathleen
