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By lynn

I teach in NC too, and last year was my first year teaching 3rd grade. I found both the pretest and the EOG in math difficult. I was not happy with my math scores from last year (EOG) and worse yet we won't get this year's
pretest scores for math until January. We are grouping as a grade level (only 2 classes, I have the high avg. to the above grade level and the other teacher has the avg to low), but I am still very concerned about having my students prepared. I feel very good about the reading, but our current math program (Saxon) introduces some key topics later than I like (regrouping to the hundred's

place) and doesn't spend enough time on somethings (like fractions). Last year, we received the Buckle Down books written by the state after Christmas. During the last few months I grouped my students by ability and my assistant and I worked our way through the Buckle Down books. It was very insightful because often the terminology or the way concepts are presented differed from our math program and this helped even my strong math students prepare for the EOG. We did the same thing in reading with the Blast Off books (also from the state, they have new ones out this year). Since I felt better about reading than math we spent three days a week on math and two days on reading. I blocked off an hour each day and both my assistant and I met with 2 groups each day. We switched groups each week so I was sure I was meeting with each student. Our groups were abiity based and the math groupings were different from the reading groupings. I still continued to teach my regular math and reading lessons, but instead of doing guided reading/literature cirlces we did EOG Prep. groups. I wish time allowed for me to continue the guided reading and prep. groups, but I couldn't work it out last year. I am hoping to begin sooner this year and try to keep time for guided reading. If only we had another hour in our day. There is always so much to do. Best of luck.