In class on Tuesday, we were provided with the opportunity to examine the curriculum materials for K-6 math in Newfoundland and Labrador. It always surprises me when a professor shows us what we will actually have available to us as teachers, because in the first year of the program I didn't really think we would have much of anything. There must have been a miscommunication somewhere, because I (and some others I know) thought that we were pretty much given the curriculum guide and textbooks and more or less told to come up with all of our own lessons and buy our own resources.
So, it's comforting to know that I'll have more than nothing at my disposal. Some of the material is so guided that it actually gives instruction for every page of a read-aloud to a kindergarten group. I think that might be overkill, but I get the idea. It's certainly detailed. A big part of being a teacher is examining the way that others teach something and then deciding whether or not you wanna teach that way, or what changes you would make. I think that's one of the benefits of having rich lesson ideas, it allows you to take it and change it and turn it into something that works for you in your classroom.
Something I noticed progressing through the grades is that once you reach grade three, the picture books disappear. It gets a lot less colourful and fun. Math becomes a little serious. Is this necessary? I've met children in grade three and I think they wouldn't consider themselves too mature to have a bit of colour in mathematics. I feel like the point of having these picture books in the first place is to add some realism to the subject so kids can understand it. I don't quite understand why that focus is taken away at the point where it is. But perhaps that offers the opportunity to supplement the existing resources with fun things I find on my own.
Personally, I noticed an awful lot of arithmetic in the documents. Not saying that's not important and obviously it's a large chunk of the curriculum, but I just felt like I couldn't find that many examples of how to implement other aspects, interactive aspects, or problem solving beyond asking the arithmetic question in words(which I remember was considered problem solving by a few of my teachers in the primary grades). I can just see how it could be easy to fall into the routine of following everything these teacher guides say to do, and not really ever breaking out into your own lessons. Not saying they are not great resources, but certainly they can't encompass everything we should be teaching in math classes. I think, perhaps like most concepts I've encountered in education so far, a balance needs to exist.
