Noticing Blog- week 8 Robb

            Walsh is out of school this week, so I tried to do some extra noticing last week while school was still in session. I hate that I feel like I’ve been constantly critical of the curriculum we have, I really do, but I do have to gripe just a bit about how my students are interacting with the Storytown curriculum. I have been having a lot less trouble than I usually do with supplementing the lessons I use in ELA from this particular curriculum. However, I really dislike the way that the curriculum constantly lumps the ELL and “below-level” students together at times. It is not direct but often the curriculum’s suggestions are the same for both of those student demographics.

            In my own mind, I know that many of my ELL students are fairing quite well and actually exceeding some of their “English-only” students in their reading, speaking and writing. Maybe this is a unique experience, and typically my beginning-level and ELL students would be more “on-par” with one another, however, in my situation, I am constantly asking, “why?”

            I have, like many teachers I know, a love-hate relationship with scripted and prescribed curriculum. The combination of this relationship and my need to personalize what we “need to learn” by makig it relevant to students causes me to write, create, draw and plan a lot of different homework assignments, lessons and activities, all from scratch. I do not know if I am "working too hard", like my MT likes to tell me I am, but I really wonder if there might be an easier way. I like having the examples of the curriculum in the book, but I can't always link, especially in Mathematics, the common core standards to what we're doing. I like to see a progression, like I do in the ELA curriculum (and do not in Math Trailblazers), but I wonder if it wouldn't be better if teachers just worked from the CCSS and what they know about their students to meet those requirements.

 I have noticed a greater response in my students from the lessons I have created versus when I am "acting it out" from the books. I know some teachers feel that teacher's guides make the job easier, but I do not think that they're necessarily the best tools for teaching our students. Maybe it's just me?