Spiral Math Review for 1st & 2nd Grade

With busy classroom schedules, it can be extremely difficult to fit in continuous practice of all of the math standards. Have you ever taught a certain skill in September and then didn’t review it or go over it again until April? So frustrating! You need quick spiral math review!

Oftentimes I feel like scripted math curriculum or district pacing guides do that to us. They require us to teach something at the beginning of the year and then we never review it again! Don’t they know kids need repetition and exposure of these skills for mastery?

Here’s what I came up with to help spiral math content by doing math warm ups.

Spiral Math Review Themes

I always love a good theme, so I started these spiral math review pages by theming the days for each month. I called Mondays “Math Facts Monday” and Tuesdays “Telling Time Tuesday”… It sounds cheesy, but it helped give me an idea of what skills/standards I needed to review.

I mapped out this Skills & Standards At a Glance page. Don’t worry, there’s a free download at the end of this post! It really helped me make sure I was hitting every standard.

Implementing Spiral Math Review

So when it came time to start math, I would begin with a super quick spiral review. I’m talking 3-5 minutes. Many days I would simply write a problem or question on the board. We would spend 3-5 minutes quickly reviewing it, solving it, and talking about strategies to solve it. Other days we’d review an old anchor chart.

Sometimes I’d pass out a sticky note and students would take a minute to solve a problem and they’d bring their sticky note to the carpet to share. Quick, targeted spiral math review!

I wanted a printable page to work on these spiraling skills, so I made some for the year. You can have students do a little bit each day, or you can use it as a formative assessment on Fridays. Right now I only have 1st grade and 2nd grade because that’s what I needed for my classroom!

And guess what?! Because I know so many of you are teaching online these days, I added versions to use in Google Slides and Seesaw!

They are simple and only one page for the week! The include the themed days, standards, word problems, and quick problem(s) for your students to solve each day!

You can get a free, one-week sample of the warm ups below for first and second grades. Each sample also includes the skills & standards at a glance page.

Read More: Getting Started with Spiral Math