Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development.
“Educators are knowledgeable about how children and youth develop as learners and social beings. Educators demonstrate an understanding of individual learning differences and needs. Educators recognize the importance and connection of cultural identity, ways of being and worldviews to student learning. Educators use this knowledge to inform decisions about curriculum, instruction and assessment. Educators work to create a positive, safe and inclusive learning environment to best meet the diverse needs of students.” (BCTC Professional Standards for BC Educators)
When I was a classroom teacher, the first subject I decided to tackle was Math. I was using the 30 Day Walking Curriculum. This was an interesting group of lessons centered around outdoor and land based learning. I found that these lessons were appropriate to the learning environment; however, do to the complexity of the class, I found these lessons hard to teach to the whole class. About ¼ of the class benefited from the lessons, ¼ of the class couldn’t understand the concepts being taught, ¼ of the class refused to do the work/listen to the lesson, and ¼ of the class was more interested in disrupting the rest of the students that were actually trying to learn.
I knew that the failures of these lessons were due to two factors: student ability, some of my students did not know their numbers past three, and the second factor was pure routine. Due to the early absence of these students’ regular teacher, and the inconsistencies of any regular teachers, these students had not developed any regular routines around any subjects.
I found that the best time to get any kind of productive work out of the class was in the morning. I believe that there have been studies that reflect these findings, and I found that the later in the day, the less productive the class would become. I tried to take advantage of this by starting our day with Math. At first I had Jump Math as a resource to use in the class; however, I did not have the teacher resource or the online resource. I found that trying to teach lessons just based off the work book alone were not that beneficial to the class.
I was however able to use these lessons as an assessment tool to base my future lessons on. Having regular Math time every morning created a routine that the students could trust, and it helped set them up to be successful in other subjects later in the day. After attending a professional development seminar on Math-Up with Dr. Small, the creator of Math-Up, I began using this system to teach Math. I used the information I gathered from the Jump Math assessments to create my Math groups, and during Math stations I would incorporate the Math-Up teaching techniques to scaffold and differentiate my lessons to the needs of each individual student.
