Start of Curriculum Planning

As I mentioned before, I went to two weeks of professional development this summer. A week for readers' workshop and a week for writers' workshop. My team teacher was there too, so we had the opportunity to talk and figure out how we were going to implement our new learning in our classes. My district has signed on to using Lucy Calkins' readers' and writers' workshop curricular calendars. This means that we have a series of units we can follow throughout the year. The units help guide our instruction. Although the lessons we teach and the specifics that we decide to focus on within each unit are up to us based on what our students need, the framework is created for us. I'm feeling good and ready for literacy instruction this year.

The district science department sends us three science kits throughout the year with their adapted instructional guides to follow. I try to add in some extra readings, videos, and assessment tasks to help students with background knowledge, make it more entertaining, and/or holding students accountable for their learning. I taught two of the units last year and just have one new unit to learn this year.

Today, I started trying to plan math for the year. I think this will be my toughest subject to plan this year.
My school is getting ready for common core standards and we are encouraged to start using them to guide our instruction. However, our math curriculum does not align to common core standards. There are also major differences between the current math standards and common core standards (CCS). Since we're still being tested on the old standards, and the students are coming with knowledge from the old standards, and the math curriculum doesn't follow either set of standards, it is a challenge to start incorporating common core standards.

I spent a couple hours today looking at the common core standards, our math curriculum and pacing/instructional guide (provided by the district), and the old standards to try to find some alignment and way to plan units for the year. Our math curriculum is a spiral curriculum, but the CCS focus on teaching to mastery. Trying to align three different things that are all very different was frustrating and hard to keep track of. I was able to break the CCS into a few units and compare that to our curriculum to figure out what parts of the curriculum would be "extra" in terms of the CCS. I still need to compare all of that to the current math Performance Expectations to make sure my students will still be prepared for the MSP and to pick up where they left off in 4th grade. Then, I'll either cut out some of the extra stuff in the curriculum that's not in either set of standards to save some time or have students' do an assessment task to figure out what I need to review and what I can skip.

At this point, I think I'll dive deeper into the units that overlap since the CCS places importance on deeper understanding and reasoning. Once I figure out how many more units I will have to add in, I can  start figuring out how long each unit can/should be and compare that to our academic calendar to get a general outline for the year.

I have a lot to do tomorrow (including finishing my classroom) before the kids show up on Wednesday.

The highlight of my weekend was getting my new mailboxes! I'm so lucky to have a dad who's willing and able to build them for me. They are gorgeous!