This week starts the stressful topic of the semester....curriculum planning and design. All of us have a variety of teaching experiences - workshops, camps, programs, presentations, we all have some experience getting in front of people and delivering content. But probably the topic we've had the least experience with is actually creating and designing our own curriculum, whether it's lesson plans, unit plans or full courses of study. For me, the biggest stresser is how do I create unit and lesson plans that not only provide clear instruction and coverage of material, but that are also easily taught from and that have clear objectives without becoming just a list of activities.
The readings this week covered curriculum planning and design, from planning lesson and unit plans all the way up to planning an entire course of study for an agricultural education program. A technique discussed in the readings is "Backwards Design," something I have heard discussed in many of my education courses. Backwards Design focuses on starting with the end in mind - what do you want your students to gain from your courses, units, lessons, etc. and designing lessons and activities that progress students towards your learning objectives with clear assessments along the way. This seems pretty clear, I wouldn't just start telling a student how to do something without knowing what it is I want them to gain out of it at the end.
This is a concept that I think applies in any learning experience, not just in the formal classroom. As an example, when I'm working at my stable and teaching a new employee how to groom and harness a horse, I don't just start doing it and have them copy me. I explain to them at the beginning why each part is important - it's proper grooming and harnessing for the horse's health and safety, but also to improve business as a "spiffy" looking horse with shiny, clean harness will garner more business than a dirty horse. If I were to just tell the employee to groom and harness the horse without showing them how and without explaining the why, it's more likely that the job will not get done satisfactorily.
Backwards Design, I think is a fairly self-explanatory technique, but within all of our readings, sometimes it can get jumbled into the jargon of the various educational theories. One way I have found to better understand it is through charts and other graphical representations. In this document published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, they work through several templates for a specific social studies unit plan, showing how a unit plan would be developed with and without backwards design. Check out the document here: http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/books/mctighe2004_intro.pdf
In this age of continuing technology use in the classroom, I also looked up various curriculum design templates online. One website I found with several potentially useful apps is http://www.chalk.com/suite. This website has apps for lesson planning, attendance, and assessments. I also found this scholastic link http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/8-apps-lesson-planning-and-classroom-management which has a list of several apps useful for teachers. Maybe we'll find at least one useful app out of these links.
Happy curriculum designing!
Amanda, Good job of finding some external resources. In future posts, try to include some multimedia in the form of a picture or video!
ReplyDeletePlanning does not have to be stressful, it can be quite exciting :)