This week FLEW by! Having some warm weather helped so much. It was really fun to go outside and play with my kids and actually not be cold.
This week we’re starting a new unit on Graphs and Tables in Math. I’m finding it really interesting to see which kids remember stuff from 1st grade and which kids are completely lost. I’m also having lots of frustrations with this math curriculum. Some of the lessons seem very out of order, and I can tell it’s making it harder for the kids to grasp the new concepts. I’m finding out how hard it can be to start a new curriculum where you don’t really know what you’re doing other than following what it says to do. It’s easy for me to follow it because I don’t know anything other tahn this way of teaching, but I can see how it’d be really hard to do what this curriculum says to do if I were a teacher of many years with my own research and methods for teaching math. It seems like you have to find a balance between your own views and beliefs and what the curriculum and the district tells you to do. It’s a tough one that I am still trying to get my head around.
Other than that all is well. I’m looking forward to a few days off next week, but I’m getting very sad to think that our time with these precious children is almost over. I better stop typing before I tear up….
