Teamwork is a main focus of our fifth grade curriculum. As a teaching team, I believe we model this well for the fifth graders we teach. Now that the year's routines are solid and goals are clear, it's time to dig into students' ability to team and work together more. In order to deepen both science and math teaching, this is a critical focus.
After much consideration, I've decided to begin this focus on partnerships. Today students will think about what it takes to be a good working partner, then they'll practice those skills as they play Close to 100, a good math game for our new multiplication unit.
I'll use these same partnerships for December-February math/science exploration, problem solving, experiments, and other project work. Then we'll likely connect two partner groups to make teams for our science/math focus from after February break until April. I believe this will be a good way to build optimal SEL and teamwork too. I welcome your ideas.
