Curriculum Writing

Since I have been in my district, I have been involved in some type of curriculum writing committee each year…8th grade math, Algebra 1, 7th grade math and this year, Geometry.  I love it.  Sometimes I dislike the format we need to fit things into, but I love organizing units, seeing how it all fits together (or how it should fit together) and finding activities and resources to hit those topics the best.  I spend my summers going through my files, tossing, keeping and replacing to better reach my students.  I use the internet, Twitter and my Blog reader to find new methods, activities and ideas.  It excites me and I love watching it play out in the classroom.  I love the ability to improve a lesson for 8th and 9th period if it fell flat during 7th.  I love being able to change it all again for the following year to make it even better.  I think I am crazy to enjoy it.  Are there others out there like me?

With the changes to what I am doing next year, I won’t be teaching Geometry so I can’t fix what I didn’t like this year.  And because I won’t have my own classes, I won’t really have much planning to do over the summer.  It’s like a whole new world for me and it’s scary, but it will be a good learning experience, a challenge and a change. Being an Interventionist will be quite a change from the daily grind of teaching, but I want to go into it with an open mind because it’s a situation that I can gain a lot from, the students I will work with will be able to teach me a lot and I look forward to helping them learn and learning along with them. 🙂

 

4/30

 

US History tied to Math

Being in the middle school, I have taught US History for 12 years and while I initially was not thrilled to teach it, it has become a subject that I love.  I love the discussions that my students can have because they feel that sharing an opinion is “safe”. They challenge each other, add to what someone else said and bring up good questions that make all of us think. They all want to participate and discussion tend to go longer than planned.  Why can’t this be a math classroom?  Why are students so afraid to do all of this in math? I see it even more now because I have the same group of students for History that I do for Geometry.  In History while evaluating primary sources, they toss out questions, ideas and opinions, but in Geometry when we look at different ways to solve a problem, they take it as it is and rarely challenge.  I have found they do much better in small groups, at their tables, sharing with each other.  I love using cooperative grouping in my classroom, but can’t they reach a point where sharing to a large group is okay?  I want them to treat math the same way…without fear of what they say, without judgment by their peers for the answer they share, because that is the math classroom I desire and they deserve.  Now how can I improve on this for the future?

 

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Being Honest with Students

I am currently in our unit on Coordinate Geometry and feel like I’ve had some good activities and some not so good activities.  My students struggled a bit through identifying a missing coordinate when given variables and not numbers.  But because of their formative assessment I was able to identify the errors made and who still needed assistance.  This allowed me to back up, address general concerns to the group and then clarify specific misconceptions with those who needed it.  This is one of my favorite parts of teaching…trying something new and realizing  that maybe it didn’t work, but being honest with the students and provide another opportunity to understand and master the concept. Students need to know that learning is a journey and mistakes will continue to be made because that is the CORE of learning.  I feel that by showing them that I am still trying and failing, they will see that it is okay.  I found that my gifted students this year disliked sharing an answer or even a guess if they weren’t 100% sure they will be right.  I’ve been working hard to foster a growth mindset and allow them to be comfortable struggling, yet they aren’t quite where I want them to be.  We still have over a month to go…there’s still time!

 

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