*Cue the Britney Spears music*
New goal, update the entire school year in the next 2 months. That means LOTS of new blog posts coming. I put it on my pretty new planner I just got so it is going to happen.
Now, let's reflect on this school year. This year was yet again different than my previous years. I am still teaching 5th grade, but this year we decided to do a 3-way switch. One teacher taught reading/writing, one teacher taught science/social studies/health and I taught math. It had its ups and downs. I teach elementary school, so one of my favorite things is having my class all day, or at least only two classes. Nope, instead I know taught 85 students. This part I did not really like. If I wanted to just teach one subject and 100 students I would move to middle school.
The other issue was the schedule. I had my first block for 90 minutes, now this was probably more like 80 by the time announcements were over, all the late buses had arrived, and the breakfast line ended. This was AMAZING! 90 minutes to teach math?! The second block then came in and some days I also had them for 90 minutes! However, two days they had double specials which meant that my math time was now cut down to only 60 minutes. Still can't complain. They adjusted fairly well. My third block was split. I had them for about 20-25 minutes, then we had recess and lunch, and then we came back after lunch for the last hour of the day. Again, an amazing amount of time, but sometimes getting them to settle back in after lunch was challenging.
So on top of learning a new schedule, the county I work for also adopted a new math curriculum. We began using the math curriculum from the San Francisco Unified School District. I had mixed feelings about this. One thing I love about math is being creative, but this curriculum was scheduled down to the day. Each unit had specific lessons for each day, down to what to say, what to do, the resources to use, etc. Some teachers may love this, but I struggled at first wondering when I could veer off of this curriculum to do something I wanted to do with the students. I came to love the curriculum and feel that my students really did learn. My absolute favorite thing was the layout of the units. It spent plenty of time focusing on one topic of the math standards and allowed the students to build a good foundation before moving on to the next.
Lastly, we all know how our school year ended... Covid-19 put a big dent in the school year. March 13 I left the building not realizing that this would be the last time I would set foot in the school until my assigned day to clean up my classroom. Distance Learning will be a WHOLE set of blogs. It definitely had its ups and downs as well.
I feel like I have been on a merry-go-round that hasn't stopped for about 3 months now. But I am back! This time I don't plan to go away.
No comments:
Post a Comment