Curriculum First

From the desk of Carol C. . .

There was something about setting up my classroom that I just loved…putting out the writing center supplies and the math manipulatives, setting up the reading nook, finding objects for the science table, and locating a current map for social studies.  There were so many things like this to accomplish that it seemed it was the end of the workdays before I began to look at my curriculum with an eye towards “how am I going to get this information across even better than I did last year” or “how does my new curriculum line up with the old one”.  Waiting until the last minute meant playing catch-up all year!

What helped me to stop saving curriculum to the last day was having grade level meetings early in the workday week.  Getting together like this helped my colleagues and me to focus on what we needed to teach and how we would teach it.  These meetings gave us a chance to pool our knowledge and materials.  They enabled us as a group to evaluate our current resources and decide what we needed to change to better meet the expectations of the standards.

These meetings were important not just for veteran teachers but, also, for new ones.  Developing plans for implementing the curriculum provides an essential foundation for beginning teachers and teachers on the grade level for the first time.  A new year with a new set of expectations is daunting enough even without the huge task of unpacking the standards by yourself.

Meeting as a grade level at the start of the school year always set the stage for a more successful year for us and our students.  It started the ball rolling  for meeting regularly to discuss what was working and what needed to be refined.  It gave us all a sense of the students being “ours” rather than “mine”.  Working collaboratively with each other and across the school helped us better understand and implement the curriculum and therefore, increase our students’ successful learning.