Some mothers have been writing to me saying that their school is coming to a close, and they are feeling badly that they didn’t get to this block or that block.  In my household, we will not be finishing geography of the United States this year and will carry it over into our study of Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean next year in order to complete our North American Geography.  It is okay, it happens, and it will be okay next year.

Many times,  and I am finding this to be particularly true as a child moves into grades four and beyond, it can become difficult to outline this “exact plan” and stick to it.  For one thing, life always interrupts (well, that is at any grade), but I think with the children who are bit older things don’t always go down the same path that was outlined – you don’t always know what will go fast, what will provoke a beautiful rabbit trail, and what will go slow.  Development and learning is not a linear line that trends ever upward, but can be this dance of back and forth and sideways too.  The job of the teacher in these middle to upper grades I think becomes one of balance, gatekeeper in a sense as to what needs deepening now and when to know that this is a layer that will be deepened later.

One thing that always helps me is to think of the overlap and the custom touch.

Overlap:  Overlap, to me, means where the grades could overlap.  Continue reading →