Looking through textbooks and trying to find similar standards in multiple textbooks is not as easy as it seems. Last week, Professor Mace, Jen, Gabbie, and I sat in the library and looked through teacher textbooks to find similar standards. We thought that it would be simple to find the same standard in each textbook but that was not the case. The standards were so vague that the lessons in each textbook were different as well and made it difficult to compare. Teacher textbooks can be overwhelming and it seems impossible to determine as a teacher what exactly to teach the students.
We felt that more inexperienced teachers would tend to rely on the textbook more than experienced teachers. This can be a good and a bag thing. When the standards are vague, the teacher has freedom to teach the lesson in a more preferred way but with this freedom, it can be difficult to make a lesson with not much to go off of and teachers may struggle with their lessons because of this.
There are standards which tell us what students at a certain grade level should know to move on in their education career. Curriculum is based off of textbooks a lot of the time so the question is how do we write curriculum based on standards not on textbooks?
The standard I chose to focus on is CC. 2.4: Measurement, Date and Probability. The grade we are focusing on is second grade. There are five different areas that are covered in this standard which includes measuring and estimating lengths, telling time to the nearest five minutes, solving problems and making change using coins and paper currency, representing and interpreting data using line plots, picture graphs, and bar graphs, and adding and subtracting problems involving length. Hopefully through my research in this study, I will learn how to base curriculum on standards and not just on textbooks.
Hi
ReplyDeleteAllow me to introduce myself. My name is Deborah Sailsbery and I am a long-time educator, having served as a teacher and administrator. I currently consult in schools and often work with coordinating the standards and textbooks with good pedagogy. I appreciate the efforts that you and your colleagues are investing in understanding the standards and thus seeking to develop excellent teaching practices.
Correlating the CC standards and textbooks is indeed a challenge. As you know, the textbook companies are trying to address all of the needs of all of the people… an impossible and confusing task.
Perhaps it would be helpful to review the entire textbook in a general brief manner. Most math texts - grades 2-8, follow a similar pattern; place value, addition, subtraction, are usually first, followed by multiplication, division, measurement, geometry, fractions and decimals, depending on the grade.
Then try isolating and examining the PA Academic Standards for grade 2 for the purpose of long-range planning and assessment development. Some of the mathematical concepts are ongoing and embedded in all work that is occurring in the classroom. Some lend themselves to pacing throughout the year. By reducing the amount of material one is reviewing, the task becomes much easier.
I have sent Prof Mace a short list of just grade 2 PA Mathematics Standards.
Once the teacher has a basic understanding of the standards and a logical order to teach those, it is so much easier to use the textbook as a resource for planning, choosing what portions of the text seem appropriate to use.
This is worth the effort - so I encourage you to “keep on keep’n on”