Let's rewind a bit and I will give you some background on where these math lesson came from. The district I work for requires common planning. They want you to differentiate while systematically teaching the same thing, at the same time, in the same way because that's not confusing at all. Because common planning is forced upon the teachers, what ends up happening is lesson planning gets split up among teachers and there isn't much collaboration 😞. Or as colleague put it, "Forcing common planning only produces mediocrity, not greatness." I have lots of thoughts on this, but that will have to wait until another blog entry.
Let's move on to when the collaboration did work! At some point last year, we were all told to switch which subject we were teaching and had to pull a subject from a coffee mug. I pulled math and so did the first year teacher, who promptly started crying because she was just getting used to planning and reading, and well, we all remember how stressful our first year of teaching was. However, once she accepted that it would not be ALL bad working with me. 😜 I told her I wanted to create units that did not require us to need the out-of-date curriculum nor a bunch of worksheets. We collaborated on what to plan together and then I created a PowerPoint and a brochure to go with it. It had everything we needed and it was not a bunch of worksheets. We were so excited to share it with the team!
This is the part where the team was supposed to tell us how wonderful they and we were and thank us for all of our hard work. That's not what happened. Half of the team hated them. Clearly, the two of us were on the side of liking them, especially because our kids LOVED them! We also were given a new group member to make sure other lessons were planned since they did not like the PowerPoints. Regardless, the two of us still continued to plan math together. I made the PowerPoints and started showing her what I was doing so she could add to them.
This upcoming year, my buddy is going to teach another grade, but never fear! I am going to continue to make these PowerPoints, brochures, and I am adding handouts and flipbooks! I refuse to be mediocre and if it helps my students, I am doing it!
That was the end of that story, but now we get to discuss what is in them!
Obviously, there is a PowerPoint.
I am putting the product in my TPT store that you can find HERE!
Happy Teaching!
💜Chrissie
