As a teacher, you know what is best for your students. You know no curriculum is perfect, and sometimes, the one that is provided to you by your district doesn’t work for your class.
Supplementing this curriculum with Guided Math can help your students achieve more and can build a strong foundation for math skills. However, as a teacher, it can be hard to find ways to “fit it all in” in the time you are allotted for math.
First of all, let me start by saying that you must do what your district/principal requires of you. If they have mandated you use a curriculum, you must do so. I have talked to many teachers around the country who have been in this situation. More often than not, principals are perfectly fine with the teacher supplementing the school curriculum where it is lacking.
Today I am going to talk to you about ways you can use Guided Math alongside your mandated curriculum.
Plan Ahead
In my Guided Math Year Long Bundles, teachers will find a teacher handbook that has an outline of the year. This shows what topics will be covered in each unit, along with the standards, and vocabulary. You can use this to match up the units with your school curriculum.
Next, you can look at the day-by-day unit overviews. (These are all included in the teacher handbook if you own the bundle. If you own a single unit, that unit’s overview is found in the unit file.) These unit overviews show exactly what objective will be taught each day.
This can help you:
- match the lesson to your school’s lesson
- find practice pages that cover the same objective as your school’s lesson
- find extension activities that cover the same objective as your school’s lesson
- see what lessons built up to that lesson (in case your students need more scaffolded support)
Practice Pages
Use these as independent practice for your students during Guided Math. You could also use these as homework.
Extension Activities
The extension activities in my Guided Math units can provide you with activities your students can use to supplement what you are teaching from your school’s curriculum. In most cases, a big box curriculum provides you with lessons and worksheets, but not necessarily hands-on activities that students enjoy. This is a great way, and the main way, I encourage teachers to supplement their school curriculum.
Remediate
Many teachers feel that the Guided Math curriculum really breaks the standards down into bite-size pieces that students can handle. This is because all of the lessons cover a specific, achievable objective. In this case, you can use the Guided Math curriculum as your remediation with your students who are struggling with the district curriculum.
Check out my Guided Math units and curriculum for Grades 1-5.
Learn how I teach Guided Math!
