The biggest challenge right now is to stay the course with as much student care, attention, and positive support as possible. There are many to teach, and of all those students there's a range of investment, interest, support, skill, and follow-through. I want every child to continually develop with a positive attitude and deep learning, but as with any program, there are many challenges in meeting this goal.
For now, I'll follow through with the program set that includes the following:
- Realistic, explicit introductions and practice to support student learning
- Lots of one-to-one and small group coaching
- Multiple opportunities for students to help one another and test their own skill as they learn
- Opportunities to show what you know and learn what you still need to practice
Our program is a standards-based program that focuses on the identified state standards with a variety of exercises. In the future I hope to include more engaging project/problem based learning and math writing process--but time, numbers, support, and expectations have challenged that hope so far, but I'm not giving up.
The children are capable of good learning and growth, and I'll remind them of that as we work to master algebraic thinking skills this week. Onward.
