Swimming in the deep end.

I am swimming in the deep end at the moment. Like most teachers at the beginning of the year, everything suddenly seems to pile up and your ‘To do’ list seems to be getting longer rather than shorter. Changing year groups has been a challenge for me. A challenge I was happy to take on but boy it has been hard.

My first problem was that when I taught year 3/4 in the UK they technically were a year older than my students are now. Year 3 over there are 7 turning 8 where over here mine have either just turned 7 or are about turn seven. This is actually quite a big difference in regards to maturity and it is becoming very noticeable to me. I am actually teaching a group of children I have never taught before.  Even what they ‘should be doing by the time they enter year 3 is completely different to that of the UK.

I am going to be very honest; although I love the year group and new challenges I have to face, I am beginning to doubt myself. Teaching year 5 onwards, I was always sure of my ability. I knew what I needed to do and how to ‘tap’ into the students I had. Now, I’m not so sure.

This week, I feel I have blundered my way through writing and maths. What I thought the students could do they couldn’t. What I thought they should know, they didn’t. It has been a massive learning curve for me and part of me feels like I have failed my students already. The other part of me knows what I need to do next week to rectify this and make sure that I cater to all my students correctly.

The unknown is hard to cope with. I want to challenge my students but not to the point they begin to they find the challenge to hard and turn off. How do I find that balance? In writing I want to introduce them to a variety of vocabulary to become more descriptive. To move away from the basic sentences but I am now faced with the challenge that some of my students struggle with spelling and writing even a basic sentences. This is territory I am not used to.

Maths is the same; I have gone from teaching Stage 7/8 to now Stage 5. My idea of what they can do is very different. Even a simple activity where I placed A3 sheets around the room became a challenge as I forgot for some of them looking up; reading the question, transferring the information into their books is a process in itself.  Even the realisation that some do not know their 2.5.10x tables has been an eye opener.

I enjoy challenges but I do worry that I am way out of my depths sometimes. This along with the combination of now working more in a Team rather than as an individual teacher has given me a lot to think about. So this weekend I will be doing a lot of work to try and get next week ‘just right’. To make sure that I have planned lessons correctly, that cater for the diversity of my groups and develop activities that will teach them but also challenge them.

I know for at least a few more weeks I will continue to swim in the deep end but hopefully as the weeks go by, I will manage to slowly get myself back down to the shallow end where I will feel that everything is going right and I feel comfortable with myself and my ability.