"Dyscalculia No More"

A lesson plan for teaching math to elementary school children must have two priorities that seem to be at cross purposes. The plan must enable the teacher to be totally prepared not only for each day’s curriculum but to look down the calendar for what will be needed by the students as the lessons build upon one another. In this way, the teacher can keep clearly delineated the lesson objectives that are important for that week’s work from the lesson priorities that are crucial to understanding the more complex math concepts that are coming in the weeks ahead.

At the same time the lesson plan must have built into it as much flexibility as possible for the instructor to adapt the plan and make changes on the fly as the class needs dictate. If the teacher perceives that the class is advanced and taking to the lessons extraordinarily well, he or she must be able to make adjustments to the lesson plans to take advantage of the aptitudes of the students. Similarly if there is remedial work that needs to be done, the lesson plans must allow for the teacher to slow down on certain key concepts and even allow more class sessions to those ideas so the material doesn’t race ahead of the elementary schools student’s ability to keep up.

As the school year approaches, many elementary school teachers become concerned if their math curriculum lessons plans will fit both of those objectives. The preparation time is nothing short of crucial because to stand in front of a classroom of elementary school youth with no roadmap to follow will result in a catastrophe. That moment of truth when you look up from your carefully developed lesson plan at that sea of 20-30 young faces that you need to both teach as well as inspire and motivate tolerant math is a time when you really get a feel for whether that lesson plan is grounded in reality.

Probably the best way to fine tune your math lesson plan is to work with seasoned teachers or even take a year before you take on math as part of the curriculum you teach and work in a classroom with an experienced teacher to get a good feel for the relationship between that lesson plan and how the teacher conducts the class. The lesson plan is a master strategy for teaching. But it is also a basic outline that you as teacher must be able to deviate from to meet the needs of the class to assure that the teaching objectives are met.

It will take time to develop lesson plans that are put together well enough to carry you for an entire semester of teaching math to elementary school students and achieve your learning objectives and still stay on track week to week. It will take time, wisdom and some thought to fine tune those lessons plans until they are guides that really will work. But once you have a set of working lesson plans for math and the other subjects you will teach at the elementary school level, they will be gold to you as you use them over and over each year.