For math, my district gives me a math curriculum, which comes with several teacher’s manuals and other materials to help me teach the students what they need to know. The same with science and social studies. A little with PE.
But writing? We hardly get any help from our curriculum or our district. Most of the writing in our curriculum is things like, “Writing in a Journal” or “How to Take a Phone Message.”
Really? Who cares how they write in a journal? And let their parents tell them how to take a message.
Our district (and the state) expects us to teach writing a personal narrative, a fictional narrative, a narrative summary, an expository summary, and a response to literature. Our district tests us on 4 of those. And in fourth grade we have the state writing test, which can be any of those (we don’t find out which one until the day of the test). Almost none of that is covered in our state approved, district bought curriculum. And the district sure doesn’t give us any added support. The teachers are on their own.
The state writing test is coming up in a few weeks. Wish me luck.
Trying Teacher 