I am pre-service teacher. I have experience in both departmentalized and non-departmentalized classrooms. I have recently been placed in a volunteer position in a departmentalized classroom. We are the Math/Science classroom. I am finding it a bit draining because it seems to be "all math all the time". If you teach in a departmentalized classroom, do you have any tips to offer? How do you keep things interesting? How do you stay motivated?
Keep going. I look for a way to link across curriculum. See if there are ways to collaborate with other subject areas. I linked up with literacy and science through designing a garden. We were working on area and volume and geometry and it linked with literacy with persuasive writing and science with environmental science and growing things. Ongoing project is linked with math via graphing and measurements and volume and that sort of thing.
Science contains a lot of math opportunities such as graphing, averaging results, ... I kept things interesting by doing lots of hands-on activities for math and science both. If you have a few minutes before class is over get some multi-sided dice and go mental math with the numbers thrown. You can add, subtract, multiply and divide. Good luck.
I am departmentalized in fifth grade. I teach the math and science and love it! I have two 2 hour blocks. We integrate lots of technology with PBL, STEM activities, and lots of experiments. We have also been integrating reading into our math and science curriculum. The Picture Perfect Science book is great!
Thank you so much for your reply! Do you miss teaching Language Arts and Social Studies?
I miss reading certain books with the students like Wonder and Tuck Everlasting. I really enjoy only planning for and teaching two subjects. I try to bring in picture books into science lessons and it's worked well. The students love it.
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