MAD+MINUTE+Examples

What is a Mad Minute Exercise?
Mad Minute exercises allow students to work quickly to practice and refine procedural skills. The exercises focus on the mental tasks of recall and replicating a procedure. The exercises are written so as to become slightly more complex within the minute so as provide the student opportunity of deepening his/her procedural competence. Each Mad Minute exercise focuses on one specific concept or procedure so that the student can practice the procedure at least 10 times in a minute. The tasks would be intentionally followed up in class by purposeful extension to call out the concepts and mathematical generalizations

How will we Use Mad Minutes to Support Student Success?
Each Mad Minute exercise will support one or more of the stated Through Line Concepts. It allows quick practice as well we an opportunity of formative assessment of each student's procedural skill. It provides feedback for the student about their procedural competency. The tasks also facilitate class discussion about what habits of mind allow a student to work quickly through a procedure. We hope to support the idea that procedural competency is not achieved simply by practice but by purposeful practice.

How do I write a Mad Minute Exercise?
There is a protocol for the exercises. Notice that the basic structure for the exercise is 1) Work Quickly 2) Pause and Reflect 3) Extend Knowledge 4) Reflect on understanding.

Examples of Mad Minute Exercises
Here are examples of a Mad Minute Exercises. Note that they are cross-referenced to through-lines and pre-college level course.



The Mad Minute Exercise builds student confidence in recognizing and differentiating between algebraic forms. The students are asked to recognize and sort. This supports the throughlines decoding/Interpreting meaning,, creating mathematical equivalence, and number sense skills. This task is appropriate after strategies of factoring have been introduced and some homework exercises have been completed previously. This activity would be appropriate for students in Math 91 and Math 95 in the precollege curriculum. It could be used for review in Math 103, Math 111, and Math 151.