Math curriculum k-6

           After today's class activity in which went through the different math resources that are available to teachers for grades kindergarten to grade 6. I learned a few things on how math is taught throughout the k-6 schools systems.

The one thing that really surprised me the most was the big jump in math from kindergarten to grade 1. I found that for kindergarten the curriculum was rather easy and fun, in which the students learned about shapes numbers, and patterns. The books were fun and easy for teachers to use for their students. Then when I looked at the curriculum for grade 1 math, i noticed that there seemed to be a huge jump from how the books were written and presented in grade 1 from kindergarten. In the grade 1 books I noticed that the problems seemed a lot more complicated then they were in the kindergarten books, also  the books seemed a lot more difficult then i thought they were in grade 1, by which i mean they seemed a little more advanced then i thought they should be for grade 1.

Another thing which surprised me was the way that the work books and resources were designed with colorful pictures and drawings but then as soon as we looked at the grade 3 resources they were all black and white and boring. This surprised me because i would have thought that since math is such a difficult subject for some students, that if they made the work books for exciting for students they may have a better understanding of the subject, rather than being board just looking at black and white papers.

The last thing that surprised me was when i was looking at the grade 6 workbook I noticed there was a little section on patterns, and I found that a little poetic because in kindergarten they learn about patterns and now in grade 6 they are looking at patterns again, this to me felt like the students were going full circles in their math learning cycle.

In our text book we looked at problem solving, and 10 steps in which as teachers we should prepare our class for problem solving, and after looking at the different curriculum's and resources for math today, I feel that we could apply these steps to the different curriculum's and be ready to teach our students the different problems they will have to solve in math.