Happy New Year! I know that it has been a while since my last post, but between starting graduate school and the holidays, I have been swamped. I have had several discussions in the last month that include some form of the following statement. “I have to move on, because I am so behind pacing!” I have decided that I need to address this issue even if it angers some.
Math curriculum pacing is something that I have grappled with for many years. The tug of war between where we are and where the pacing says we should be is a constant struggle. I spent the first 5 years of my career rushing through math units in order to keep up with the district’s pacing guide. I could proudly say that I was teaching the unit that the district guru’s thought I should be at any given time, but unfortunately, I could not say that my students were really getting a deep understanding of mathematics. I spent a lot of time over the next summer pondering this and decided that the pacing guide is not as important as student learning. From then on, I have treated the pacing guide as more of a suggestion and my students have been the better for it.
I went to a seminar on mastery learning and decided that this is the way I wanted to teach math in my classroom. (good article on mastery learning) In a nutshell, mastery learning is a process in which you teach the unit and assess. Students who show mastery then do enrichment activities while you reteach the unit to the rest of the students and reassess them. Once all your students demonstrate mastery of the unit, you move on to the next unit.
That first year, I only got through 7 of the 10 units that I was supposed to teach before state testing and I was very nervous about my students unprepared for the exam. I had done a quick overview of the last 3 units so that they wouldn’t be blindsided by any questions on the test. The morning of the exam, I reminded them about how much math they had learned this year and to do their best. As I waited those 6-8 weeks for results, (this was before computer based testing) I became more and more worried that I had made a huge mistake. When the results finally came in, I was amazed. Most of my students had passed the test with plenty of room to spare.
The following year I completed 8 ½ units before testing and they passed again. I was convinced. This was the way to go. I have never gone back to strictly following a pacing guide and I have never regretted it. Most years since then, I have managed to get through all the units before testing even using mastery learning. How? I spend 8-10 weeks at the beginning of each year investigating number and number sense. I let my students explore numbers and number relationships while I just ask questions and watch them make connections. If you can give your students that number sense, other units will go much faster than the pacing guide gives you and you can make up that time that you spent on number sense. Computation and Fractions are two units that students can fly through if they have a good sense of numbers and number relationships.
Here is my soapbox philosophy about it. If you use mastery learning and get through 80% of your curriculum, then the students have mastered 80% of the curriculum and should be able to answer 80% of the questions on the test. PASS! You can cover the other 20% after testing, so they are ready for next year. If you rush through your instruction to keep up with an arbitrary pacing guide that doesn’t take your students into consideration, they will maybe master 50% of what you teach. A 50% on the test. FAIL!
Here is a link to an excellent talk about mastery learning in math and why it is important.
For those of you who have followed me since September, my next post will be the after pics of my well organized math hut.
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Math Monster 