Math meetings are an activity that more special education teachers, especially those in autism programs, need to know about. They’re a great way to introduce and reinforce calendar skills, money concepts, functional life skills, adding, regrouping, and place value. What better way to start off your math lessons?

A math meeting is a like a math- themed circle time. You can make it as advanced or as basic as you need to, depending on the needs of your class. Math meeting usually incorporates calendar skills, counting, and other math skills.

Many teachers use math meetings as their math lesson anticipatory set, using it as a platform to introduce their topic for the day. A math meeting will often start off with the calendar, counting up/ down the days of the year, and other math activities. At the end, you can mix in your topic of the day for a smooth transition into your lesson.You can teach tons of functional life skills in just 5 minutes a day!

By nature, people generally crave predictable and structured routines.

Students with special needs especially benefit from a consistent and structured daily schedule.

Math meetings are the perfect way to provide that daily dose of consistency while reinforcing academic skills!

Instead of starting your math lesson with a worksheet, math meetings can be a fun multisensory alternative.

You can invite students to sit together and interact with hands- on math materials.

Incorporate the skills from the worksheet into your math meeting for a more lively and memorable lesson.

During a math meeting, you can incorporate calendar skills, money concepts, math facts, place value, and problem solving.

An added bonus is the social component of sitting, listening, interacting, and taking turns with peers.


It's such a valuable use of time! Think of all the math skills you can practice in that 5 minute period of time!

When people think of math meetings, they tend to think of a general education classroom. But, as a self- contained special education teacher, I can assure you that need not be the case.

I’ve used math meetings with low functioning and non-verbal students and I’ve consider it to be one of the best math activities I can recommend!

I did a typical circle time every morning with my class, minus the calendar component. Then, after lunch we gathered in my math center and started with the usual calendar concepts.

We completed the monthly calendar together and counted out the days of the month with a bingo marker. Then, we added a popsicle stick to our “days in school” collection and determined if we could group our single popsicle sticks into a ten yet. We’d add a penny to our “bank” and see if we could trade up for any bigger coins.

All of these math meeting activities reinforced the daily life skills that most of my students had in their IEP goals. Our math meeting provided a structured and consistent routine for my students to practice their daily math skills.

By the end of the year, I was always shocked at how well my students were counting, using coins, adding, and even regrouping!

Seeing my lower functioning students use a place value mat independently has confirmed over and over that math meetings are absolutely a great way to start each math lesson.

Love the idea of a math meeting, but don’t know where to start? Don’t have time to create the materials you’ll need for the year?

My Calendar Time Materials resource includes exactly what you need for a great Math Meeting routine.

It includes calendar pages for each month of the year, along with tokens that you can paste on if you’d prefer an alternative to using bingo markers. It also comes with place value mats with and without ten frames so you can use them with a variety of manipulatives.

But my favorite part of this resource is the money concept components. You can use real coins with Velcro with this piggy bank poster, or use the coin pieces included with the resource.

It even comes with a “Making Cents” (Get it?) poster to help students determine if they can trade up for bigger coins.

Save Yourself Time and Get it Right Now!

Get your math meetings off to a good start with this resource. I used it in my own classroom for years and have been amazed at how well my students did with it!

If you use math meetings in your classroom, I’d love to see how you implement it! Tag me on Facebook or Instagram so I can see your ideas.