It’s Week 10, and you glance at the untouched strand of the curriculum, you realise time is running out! At the conclusion of Term 3, the feedback from teachers was that they must move on with their maths curriculum content. They struggle with knowing that their students need responsive teaching and consolidation, but how to cover the extensive curriculum! So the verdict is a very worrisome one: I must move on, or risk not covering the content!
The coverage of curriculum is a very common and typical dilemma and I too have grappled with this predicament. Teaching and curriculum design is very much like the layers of an onion, where the concepts are layered and as the onion is peeled back it reveals the depth, flexibility and broad scale of ideas. I know how hard it is to find relevant content quickly, especially for time-poor staff; I’ve been guilty of handing over a worksheet that somewhat aligns with the content, only to find that its just not suitable, progressive enough, or just far too difficult!
I acknowledge from my experience from working across multiple sites and across various public and private sectors, there are many ways to deliver curriculum content for similar outcomes. Some strategies I’ve used in the past were using daily fluency lessons. I discovered through action research that fluency can improve place value outcomes for indigenous students. I used a very intentional design approach to reflect the big ideas and cyclic pedagogy.
The trick is to integrate as much conceptual understanding, real world links and flexibility of thinking about broad concepts with simplicity. This takes me some thinking time! How do you plan to integrate content and layer conceptual ideas? And, how are you supporting students who still need more practise?
While I continue my journey to write clear and concise plans with depth, there are some intervention ideas that accompany my lessons 1 to 4 of each unit plan, which might help you now. You might choose to use the Tier 2 Intervention Support for small group work or fluency introductions to cycle back over content before lessons. They are great one pagers that progressively guide the teacher to aid students requiring Tier 2 support.
I’d love to hear from you. Follow me for more intervention content and comment with your own strategies.
To save you time, I’ve included a ready-to-go Tier 2 Intervention page from my Freebie on Year 4 Fractions: Equal Distance. https://teachbuysell.com.au/l/1-freebie-year-4-fractions-equal-distance-lesson/68b7a216-a89c-4a9c-a508-1663fcc0a115
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