Principal’s Corner by Johanna Thomas

Teaching is both an art and a science.

Educators must collaborate with colleagues to continue to know, understand and teach the standards for their grade level or content area. The standards addressed may be the national or Minnesota state standards, depending on the content area. Understanding why standards are important is key to understanding the process of learning at increasingly more advanced levels.

One particular standard chosen to make this point  is in the content area of math — algebra in particular. Because I am an elementary principal, I will keep this example to the elementary level. You will see the level of complexity increase and the importance of instruction at each level in this example. 

Kindergarten: Recognize, create, complete and extend patterns. Use shapes, numbers and colors to create patterns.

First grade: Recognize and create patterns and use rules to describe patterns. Create simple patterns using objects, pictures, numbers and identify the rules to complete the patterns and understand that patterns may be repeating, growing or shrinking.

Second grade: Recognize, create, describe and use patterns and rules to solve real world and mathematical problems. Identify, create and describe simple number patterns involving repeated addition or subtraction, skip counting and arrays of objects such as counters. Use patterns to solve problems. 

Third grade: Use single-operation input-output rules to represent patterns and relationships and to solve real-world and mathematical problems. Create, describe and apply single-operations involving addition, subtraction and multiplication to solve problems.

Fourth grade: Use input-output rules, tables and charts to represent patterns and relationships to solve real-world and mathematical problems. Create and use input-output rules involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to solve problems. Record the information in a chart or table.

Fifth grade: Recognize and represent patterns of change; use patterns, tables, graphs and rules to solve real-world and mathematical problems. Create and use rules, tables, spreadsheets and graphs to describe patterns of change and solve problems.

The creativity of  planned activities as well as the intentional facilitation of learning experiences and activities on the teacher’s part is considered the art of teaching. Understanding and facilitating learning is a highly skilled, research-based profession and it is important that student learning is addressed through instruction focused on agreed upon academic standards.  Just as critical, is the understanding of the art of teaching by providing an interesting and engaging classroom for learning.

Teaching is both an art and a science. 

Johanna Thomas is the principal of Halverson Elementary School.