Standards, Curriculum and Icebreakers...oh my!

Today was the first day of training for our new math adoption. Cool surprise of the day is that we get paid for attending the two-day training. Nice! That helps with some of the spending I have done putting my classroom together. :0)

Certain parts of the training were fantastic. When we broke out into grade level teams to go over the first edition of the teacher's manual, I really got a lot out of it. It was great to meet some of the other Kinder teachers in the district and to get their take on teaching math to the little ones. Everyone was really nice and we had a good discussion going about how to incorporate the changes that come with the new adoption.

Other parts of the training were not so great. I know they include ice breakers and "fun" activities to break up the day and make sure we are not completely bored, yet I signed up because I wanted to become familiar with the new curriculum, not because I wanted to get to know people better. If it's a long day filled with lots of information--I can take it! I can see starting the day off with something fun or silly, but I felt like there were too many switches taking us from the larger group to our grade level teams which interrupted the flow of what we were really there to accomplish. All of the additional activities were interesting and fun, yet ultimately I feel like we could have gotten more out of the day if we had just skipped over those... I know...party pooper in the house...

I got to see a few other teachers from my former school which was nice and I feel more comfortable about teaching the curriculum now that I had the chance to look through the teacher manual and get some guidance on what to expect. When I am done posting this, I am going to take a look at youtube because I was told there are some sample lessons posted on there. It's always nice to see a new curriculum in action to help wrap my mind around what I will be doing. Fortunately, they have specifically stated that half day Kinder sessions are expected to get through unit 4 instead of unit 6 and they have put together separate pacing guides for full day and half day Kinder. They also expressed that this is kind of an action research year so we are really encouraged to try out the curriculum even if we are doubtful certain things will work with our grade levels and the district wants our feedback. We were a little skeptical of the little notes in the margin recommending that we look ahead to notice that we should cut out the paper manipulatives ahead of time and that we might want to print them on card stock, but we will give it a go. There are some daily practice activities that are important to the curriculum and even though they require us to do calendar and some math activities in a different way than we are used to, they actually seem to be fun and I think the kids will do great. We can already tell it will take a lot of time to train the kids to do the daily routine/practice activities, but in the end I think it will become pretty simple.

I have another day of training tomorrow and then I am planning to try out a spin class at my new gym with my roomie. I got a pair of those super padded bike shorts today, so hopefully I will make out ok with spinning. I have done it before and it's not a favorite of mine, but I know it's a great workout and it will be fun to do together.