Cycle Four: How Should Curriculum Be Generated?
Generating,
creating, and revising curriculum can be a daunting task. There are many factors to consider such as
what backgrounds are associated with your students, the level of understanding
the teachers have of the objectives, and the many decisions associated with the
organization of the curriculum. It is a
necessary evil, as without a quality curriculum, the students will surely fall
behind.
I must begin
by saying that underlying agendas should not be part of developing a
curriculum. It should never be about the
agenda of the adults, but about the students themselves. Private agendas such as the recent topic in
Texas dealing with religious viewpoints should be saved for church and home
environments, not public schools. When I
say this I am not stating that religion should not be taught. I believe public schools should teach all
religion and in an appropriate manner.
This would entail not leaving certain information out or only focusing
on certain people in history. One of my
favorite high school classes was Global Studies because we learned about
religions I had never heard before and what their practices were. I went from only knowing one way of life, to
understanding and discovering what else is out there and could embrace the
diversity of religion.
To restate
the question at hand, we are studying how curriculum should be generated. I believe it is important to take into
consideration your students, their home lives, backgrounds, and interests. Surveys should be sent to families and
teachers should survey their students at the beginning of each year. Yes there are core objectives to be taught,
but you can teach an objective in many ways.
One example is how I taught mean, median, mode, and range this
week. I have an athletic class who
thrives on sports and competition. I
timed 15 students in the hallway for how fast they could run from one door to
the other. We then calculated the mean,
median, mode, and range for the set of data collected. The objective was to calculate the mean,
median, mode, and range of a set of data.
My students were able to do this after not only competing with one
another, but also running in the hallway.
You can imagine the excitement.
Next year, I could have kids who hate running and therefore would pull
another bag of tricks out of my teacher hat.
The point being, pay attention to the students and what will stimulate
and engage them in order to provide learning experiences with the desired
outcome.
When it comes
to curriculum, how it is organized is high important. I believe the vertical and horizontal
relations are important. Each year
should go into more depth of the previous year.
This year 4th grade learned how to identify, add, subtract,
and multiply fractions. Next year they
will divide fractions, begin working with mixed numbers, etc. The next year they will incorporate fractions
with algebra concepts. It is taking a
concept and going into more depth, which will deepen their understanding. Horizontal relations are of equal value. Last week the students were studying vocabulary
terms from a government unit in Social Studies.
The term discussed was treason. I
explained what it meant and provided examples, but yesterday while reading a
story about Nazis and the Holocaust they read an actual example of what treason
was involving Adolf Hitler. It was like
27 light bulbs going off in the classroom.
Not only were they excited that one subject had to do with the other,
but they translated that term from one thing and deepened the understanding of
it in another. Curriculum must also be
reiterated throughout the year. If you
teach one topic in November and never refer to it again, how can you expect
students to remember it? This leads into
another concept for curriculum known as workshop. I believe math, reading, and language arts in
elementary schools should have scheduled workshop where the students are
independently working with multiple forms of material such as manipulatives,
pencil paper, etc. This should give them
that time to apply what they have learned from a previous lesson. During this time the teacher should also be
working with small groups on areas they have not reached mastery on. This will help maximize learning because
students are getting more one on one attention as well as having continuity of
concepts. You can have your students
practice long division, which they may have learned 3 months ago, but they are
getting continued practice with it.
Another
important concept in generating curriculum is how to evaluate what has been
retained. When it comes to the year as a
whole. Students should be evaluated at
the beginning, middle, and end. They
should be evaluated on each subject area.
The North Western Education
Assessment program which my school calls NWEA test is helpful in this
component. It tests students in the
fall, winter, and spring. I am given
data for Math, Reading, and Language Arts and Science. Unfortunately it does not assess Social
Studies. The data I am given helps me
see what areas my students need help on in each subject which are broken into
dmaller categories. Math is broken into
Measurement, Geometry, Data and Probability, Numbers and Operations, and
Algebra. I can then find what objectives
in those categories to work on with my students. The students are given scores after being
tested and receive goals to reach by the end of the year. They are given
incentives for reaching their goals. I
know there are flaws as this is only one kind of appraisal and it is all
computer. You have students whom are
poor test takers and other factors, but I do think it is good that it tests
them and allows the teacher to gage where his/her students are at throughout
the year. As far as evaluating the lower
levels of organization such as units, pre assessments should be made, formative
assessments should also be done throughout the daily lessons in the unit, and
then a final assessment should be made.
You should always know where your students are. If 80 percent of students have reached
mastery then the teacher can move on, however if it is less than 80 percent I
believe re-teaching must occur. These
are all imperative points of evaluation.
Who should
be involved in all of this?
Everyone! If 4th grade
teachers have no clue of what 3rd grade teachers are doing then we
have a major disconnect. You can’t build
deeper connections if you don’t know what the prior grade has done. I also couldn’t agree more with the point
that was made regarding how teachers all need to be on board when it comes to
clearly defining the objectives and how they are to be expressed and
evaluated. It cannot be about me it has
to be about we. For the students are
everyone’s responsibility from kindergarten until 12th grade.
Sources
This article discusses ways of engaging students and the
importance of this in curriculum. This
goes along with the theories of the second reading we did where the author
discusses how important it is for students to be involved and engaged in
learning experiences.
This article discusses a school that is in need of
redeveloping their curriculum to align with state standards. In relation to this cycle, it deals with the
fact that teachers need to teach the actual objectives and have an
understanding of the objectives. To
often do teachers find lessons that seem interesting, but have no tie in with
objectives/standards needing to be taught.
This blog was found on Education Week. I found it interesting in it’s relation to my
post as well as our reading in that it emphasizes the importance of developing
highly qualified standards in which are engaging. One form of engagement mentioned was to use
primary source documents. This, to me,
engages students because it gives a visual as to a glimpse at history in
various times. I have seen this in
Michigan standards and am glad it is being used.
In my blog I mentioned the use of the NWEA test at my
school. There are many useful pieces of
information to get a better understanding of what this assessment program
is. I have found it helpful for me but
please keep in mind I am not a fan of only using a standardized test to gage
students academic success.
I referred to having workshops in class daily. This website is useful for implementing writing
and reading workshops in the classroom.
It provides ideas, duration, and many other useful tips. I recommend it!
