Go Math

Well here it comes. I hate change. A lot. I think I'm worse than the kids. Last school year we were using Everyday Math which I found to be really difficult for students who do not have number sense or reasoning skills. I embraced the thought of a new curriculum and so much as tossed my Everyday Math to the side in my closet. Banished from the current curriculum for this school year, I was looking forward to my Go Math workshop over the summer until I got there and found an extremely overwhelming curriculum with so many different books and tools. I liked this at the beginning. It all sounded so great when they talk about it like Math is the only subject you teach. I left feeling like I had a pretty good grip on it until...the boxes came. The amount of books and the sizes of them were crazy. The student classwork journal is huge for first grade. Last week we were suppose to start unit 1 but postponed it because we didn't feel confident enough to teach it. We administered the beginning of the year assessment which I found to be pretty hard and a waste of time. I already knew what it told me. Scratch that for next year. Monday we started unit 1 and already I have an issue with it. There are a lot of pages the kids are suppose to do for one lesson. Today in lesson 4 they had to complete 3 pages plus a mid chapter check up. We didn't have enough time in our math block so it went into social studies which I don't mind cutting short but that can't happen all the time.

Two things I noticed today. Kids didn't seem that engaged and I had 3 kids go to the nurse with a stomach ache. Could

just be a coincidence but I'm skeptical as always. I want to love Go Math but we just aren't there yet. My hope is as it goes along we will enjoy it more. There are so many different tools and everything is scattered on ThinkCentral. Only time will tell if I give this curriculum 2 thumbs up or down. Right now it's 1 up and 1 down.