Math Curriculum Guides

After looking at each curriculum guide and getting a glimpse of the resources available for teachers to use I was surprised. I was surprised by the fact that there are tons of resources provided for teachers such as books that can be used for read-alouds (especially for primary), and even pre-written quizzes/tests (more for elementary), things I had been completely unaware of.

My group started with the Kindergarten curriculum, which I really enjoyed. There were a lot of books dealing and connecting with the SCOs which I found really cool. I absolutely love to read, and read to children, so tying in books to help teach them concepts of math, I feel is great and it's also a great opportunity to tie in SCOs of language arts. 

As my group progressed through the tables and the curriculum guides for each grade, we found that the jump from Kindergarten to grade one, was big (when looking at the books given for resources). When we then looked at grade two, there was even a greater jump from grade one! The reading level of the material given as resources, was very high! I work at the Newfoundland and Labrador Learning Disability Association as a tutor, tutoring children with learning disabilities, therefore I know the reading levels fairly well. To give a child in grade two, one of the resource books, I feel would be extremely overwhelming for a student because the reading level seemed fairly high (for a student in grade two). Not only that, but not every student is at the same reading level, which would put some students at a disadvantage and would be incredibly unfair because the student may do well with math, but struggles with reading, therefore wouldn't understand the math.

As we continued on, i noticed that the curriculum and resources got less colourful and more bland and more problem-practice oriented, which made me sad; why can't grade sixes for example, have colourful and interesting books to read that relates to their math curriculum as well? It reminded me of when I went through elementary school, all we ever seemed to do was exercises in our exercise book. I would have loved to have been given the opportunity to read fun and interesting books dealing with math concepts and learn that way as well! For our Children's Literature course, we write blog posts as well, and this week's posting was to find a book that related to math or science concepts that could be used with our Newfoundland and Labrador curriculum. I found a great book series called The Tales of Sir Cumference that deals with math concepts taught in grades K-6. The book I chose to write my blog on was all about angles and followed a character named "Radius" on a fun adventurous journey. This book would be perfect for students in grade six because it deals with concepts of angles they are learning, and even though it's a picture book, it is one that is enjoyable for all ages. I feel that books like this series would also be useful in elementary grades and should be used by more teachers!

Overall, I thought this activity was a great activity to get exposed to the grades K-6 math curriculum, to see how the math evolves and the curriculum changes, and to see the resources that are available to teachers.