Teacher Leadership
Standard 9
Evaluate and use effective curriculum design
Background
My background for understanding curriculum prior to the SPU Curriculum Design
class was fairly limited. I’ve been through a multi-age curriculum in a
Montessori school, third grade, and finally fourth grade. I’ve even spent time
on a cadre that developed our districts 4th grade math curriculum.
Lalor (2017), describes organizing centers as the central idea
which a unit of study is constructed. (pg. 11) These can be the topic, theme,
concept, issue, problem, process, or phenomenon. For example, a unit of study
could be using place value to determine a value of given numbers. The
organizing center would be communicated by the title, essential questions, and
big ideas. Lalor explains that essential questions are easily confused with
guiding questions. While both are equally important, essential questions gives
real world views. Guiding questions help with reading and understanding what is
being taught. Big ideas are the different concepts needed to reach the overall
learning target.
Applying Basic Lesson Design
In the beginning, I believed curriculum was the vehicle I used to teach skills
needed to reach standards. And if I want to be honest with myself, I thought of
it as a way to get the students to pass the state standardized assessment. Over
the past couple years, this understanding has expanded and is continuing to
grow. The most areas of growth for me lies within a basic lesson design using
fully guided instruction. From understanding the strength of a
curriculum, I understand where I can focus instruction on specific points of
the learning segment. In looking at my curriculum through the EDU 6524
Curriculum Design course, I was tasked to evaluate the student tasks related to
base ten concepts. We took the state standard strands 4.NBT to compare the
tasks. Coupled with a learning progression tool, I designed lessons with
scaffolds to reach the state standard. In my district, we follow a Basic Lesson
Design framework
1)
Objective: Setting the learning target, goals and purpose
2)
Anticipatory set: Accessing prior knowledge
3)
Input presentation
4)
Modeling: Guided practice
5)
Assessments
Additionally, Marzano,
R. J., Pickering, D., & Pollock, J. E. (2001), author of our current TPEP
Framework, states “Some elements we believe are necessary for change to
occur in day-to-day classroom practice
are:
1. Adequate modeling and
practice
2. Feedback
3. Allowance for
differences in implementation
4. Celebration” (p.
156-157).
According
to Lalor (2017), there are 5 types of assessments. The most commonly used is
the information-recall assessment which is really a test (p. 67).This is
generally the standardized testing, end of unit test, or even quizzes. Most of
the time, these are regarded as summative assessment. They range from multiple
choice or short answer types. The other types are product assessments,
demonstration or performance assessment, and process assessments.
The
product type assessment will come from something a student will produce that is
“tangible”. These can be sticky notes or essays. The sticky notes or even notes
taken in a journal can be used to assess student understanding. Another product
that a student can produce is a research paper or essay. This can be used to
see how well students can synthesize information of a particular topic.
Demonstration
or performance assessment type is a way to evaluate students for how they work
within a group or as an independent. Small group or collaborative is one
example of this type.
Lastly,
Process, as Lalor puts it, “comes in the form of a product or demonstration but
focuses on metacognition” (pg 68). In other words, it evaluates how student
reflects and is cognizant of his or her learning. Students address what they
misunderstand, work through problem solving, and show growth through the
process. This, to me, is a difficult yet attainable skill students can achieve.
Formative assessments
Additionally,
I think it is important to understand the formative assessments as growth
tools. Assessments are the important
cogs to a lesson design. From assessments, we can direct or redirect focus
lessons based on our students’ needs. These formative assessments, in contrast
to summative, allows teachers to identify misunderstood components. Analyzing
the formative assessments provides teachers information that give opportunity for
our struggling kids to reach learning targets. Williams, D. (2011) describes
formative assessments as “the process used by teachers and students to recognize
and respond to student learning in order to enhance that learning, during the
learning” (p. 37). This is why I feel
summative more valuable to me than summative assessments. While I believe
summative assessments are value in terms of data collection and report cards, I
don’t believe it really informs me in “real-time” teaching and learning. One
can argue that summative assessments are also formative as they determine
intervention groups.
Impact
I believe it is important to evaluate the curriculum I am
teaching. I am especially looking at through a culturally responsive lens. I
currently look at what type of impact the lessons in the curriculum effect my
students of color and diverse backgrounds. Much like how I evaluated the
strength of the curriculum as related to state standards, I evaluate the
curriculum for implicit biases. I see a lot of curriculum that is Eurocentric
in nature and does not always reach students in diverse backgrounds. This is
especially true in our English Language Arts curriculum. In some cases, as in
the Core Knowledge Language Arts curriculum I teach, it does not allow the
opportunity to expand idea on civil rights. In one situation, a First Nations
representative examined our 5th grade CKLA text reader and took it
to our district board meeting. He flips the pages and explains, “Everything in
this book describes us as dead.” Nothing in the book depicts positive
historical data of a thriving First Nations community. Most of the text written
as if “his” people were extinct. Meanwhile, story problems in math
contain scenarios where students of color have little to no background
knowledge of certain context vocabulary related to the math story. The
learning, if built with student backgrounds in mind, can be a difference on
closing achievement gaps. Hammond, Z. (2015), describes culturally responsive
teaching as, “ An educator’s ability to recognize students’ cultural displays
of learning and meaning making and respond positively and constructively with
teaching moves that use cultural knowledge as a scaffold to connect what the
student knows to new concepts and content in order to promote information
processing” (pg.15). We need to keep this in mind when evaluating curriculum in
order to design equitable lessons.
Hammond, Z., &
Jackson, Yvette. (2015). Culturally
responsive teaching and the brain : Promoting authentic engagement and rigor
among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Thousand Oaks,
California: Corwin, a SAGE Company.
Lalor, A.D. (2017) High-quality curriculum: How to design, revise,
or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. ISBN:
978-1-4166-2279-6.
Mathematics K-12
Learning Standards.(2018, April 24). Retrieved April 24, 2018, from http://www.k12.wa.us/Mathematics/Standards.asp
Marzano, R. J.,
Pickering, D., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that
works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement.
Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
William, D. (2011). Embedded
formative assessment.
