Mentoring A Fellow Teacher

I am almost finished with my Masters degree in Elementary Mathematics!! For one of my classes this semester, I am required to choose another teacher at my school and serve as their mentor in the area of mathematics. (I am also required to document my journey through this course on a blog and did not feel I could handle two different blogs, so I will be posting about my everyday classroom adventures, and my graduate school mathematics adventures here). I chose to mentor my teammate! This is the second year we have worked together and are both in our fourth year of teaching. From the start, I have felt more comfortable teaching mathematics and she feels more comfortable with the ELA aspect of the classroom. We work very well together and balance each other inside and outside the classroom. This is the second year in a row my teammate has taught a combination class, had I had more experience in the lower grades it would have been my honor this year. This year she is teaching a K-1 combo, but only 7 of her 24 students are Kindergarteners. Due to this, most of her class will be mastering the same standards and my 21 first graders. We both have high, average, and EC students in our classrooms. We will focus a lot on small group math instruction, while using lesson plans from engageny.org. I anticipate that with a combo class, and the wide ability levels I have in my own classroom, small group instruction will be more beneficial to all students, as opposed to a long period of whole group instruction. In order to measure our student's growth we will use county benchmark testing, as well as the mid-module and end of module assessments that accompany EngageNY. We will use standards based grading to ensure that our students are meeting all of the first grade standards for mathematics.