As teachers, we often have the deck stacked against us, or at least feel like we do. Probably the greatest challenge, in my personal opinion is there’s not enough time to teach curriculum and the insane amount of skills that come with the curriculum. Today, I want to share my story of experiencing this. I will share the one teaching method that I found to save me time and energy to teach more of what was expected of me.
My Experience of Not Enough Time To Teach Curriculum
I am an Elementary ELA teacher in Quebec, Canada. What does that mean? It means most of my students’ days are spent learning French. As a Quebec province, French is the official language and therefore French dominates in schools.
From 2018 to 2021, I was teaching in a private Jewish school in Montreal. That meant my students were learning French, English, Hebrew and Yiddish. This is on top of the regular non-language classes.
Why am I telling you all of this? Basically to say that if anyone knows about limited time to teach the curriculum, it’s an English teacher in Quebec!
Now you may be saying to yourself, with all of this considered, surely we Quebec ELA teachers would have fewer expectations when it comes to teaching a meaty curriculum. WRONG!
I have done a fair share of research, and as far as I can tell, the Quebec ELA curriculum is no less full than any other curriculum, such as the Common Core in the USA.
So what did I do? I knew I needed a solution to this giant problem of mine! I needed a way to:
- Be able to teach all the skills that I needed to teach
- Ensure that what I was doing/using was relevant to my students
- Engage my students in a meaningful way while doing it all!
What I found worked best for me was doing projects. Projects that involve active learning in the classroom and incorporate cooperation, research and exploring.
How I Found This Time-Saving Method
We’ve all been there…It’s the last month of school. Exams are done. Report cards are written. You just need something to fill students’ time. Enter Teachers Pay Teachers. I love this site for quick finds to use in the classroom.
What I would do at this end-of-year time was finding projects to occupy my students while keeping them from going insane. These projects included multiple exercises for students to practice writing, reading, research and oral communication skills. I noticed that these projects all had a term in the title that was “project-based learning”.
I didn’t know what project-based learning was, so I decided to research it. And my mind was blown. This term defined what I had already been doing in the classroom. I had no idea that there was a name for this strategy that I was already incorporating in my teaching.
Project-Based-Learning
Project-based learning is a method of teaching that believes students learn more, and better through active exploration of real-world challenges and problems in the form of projects.
Project-based learning is not:
- A project you give to students to do on their own
- Only done at the end of term as an assessment task
- Solely problem-based
Project-based learning is a method of teaching done through projects.
It is for all of these reasons why I feel that project-based learning is the perfect solution to the problem of not having enough time to teach the curriculum.
Are you Struggling with Not Enough Time to Teach Curriculum?
I suggest giving project-based learning a try! If done right, it can be so much fun! What I love most about project-based learning is that you see students solve real-world challenges. You feel as though you are helping your students become better humans, rather than just helping them tick off a box to pass a course.
Have you given project-based learning a try before? Let me know your thoughts in the comments down below.
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