Trials and Tribulations of an Inclusion teacher
In a perfect world, all children will master all standards when the unit is first taught. I have had to accept the fact that that thought is a fantasy. Does this mean that I am going to stop working to help my students achieve mastery? NO! It simply means that we all have strengths and weaknesses even within one subject area. Think back to when you were in school, if you were like me you had one subject that you really liked, but there may have been a strand that you didn't care for as much because you weren't as good at it as you were other strands. I have always loved math, but geometry was always a subject that I did not enjoy as much. I GREATLY disliked writing proofs. On the other hand, I loved algebra!
Our students are much the same. After teaching metric measurement to my students, I was very discouraged. No matter what I did, many of my students were not showing mastery on metric conversions. Then I spoke with my co-teacher, she reminded me that kids are going to have strengths and weaknesses and to not let that get me down. So I entered the next unit with excitement and it paid off! Many of my students who didn't master the last unit as I hoped, excelled with fractions. I did change the way that I taught this unit. I chose to front load all the skills that students would need in the unit and then we had more time to practice each skill rather than following the typical formula of introduce, practice, introduce practice where there is not much time to practice ALL the skills. This process paid off. Many students who were often earning below mastery grades in math earlier this year, began to earn mastery grades regularly throughout the unit. Students' confidence has elevated so now when I begin to reteach measurement, students will have confidence that they can in fact "do math" and will have a new excitement for learning.
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January 2017
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