Curriculum development is something that should be always ongoing, yet more often than not we have curriculum documents that get published and then take a long time to update. Having a living document to embrace new ideas and concepts within a curriculum would make more sense then having a published document that has to be updated constantly.
Preparing stake holders for curriculum redesign takes a balanced approach. Parents want to know what their students are learning. As a parent of a child who went through the "new" math in 2007, I can understand how teachers were frustrated when they could not help their kids at home. During this time i had to home school my son for part of the year as we were dealing with my father's passing, I hadn't had professional development in the new math process so there were many arguments about how my way was not the right way. We made it through but I am not sure my son has a great understanding of the math strategies his teacher was focused on but he successfully graduated now and uses math is his current employment. Students also want to voice their thoughts, and as they are the ones immersed in the teaching of the curriculum, hearing them out on their important issues will help improve engagement in schools. And teachers who live and breath the curriculum, who spend countless hours on professional development, and refining their pedagogy can offer insight that teachers even ten years out of the classroom will not have. Most times we have had cooperation with those in charge of creating curriculum so it is easy to have these open conversations. We are at a time when this is not exactly the case, Alberta 2021 and the new draft curriculum has not had the same level of transparency as previous editions of the curriculum. The curriculum is the guide and it will help focus teachers practice but at the end of the day teachers are going to determine how they will deliver the curriculum to their students.
As an instructional leader we need to know the curriculum. We need to know what it is saying, what it is asking and where the problems are. But we may not know all of the curriculum, from a high school perspective it would be hard to be an expert at all levels and subjects, even in elementary and middle school. Having strategies for reading the curriculum, for breaking it down and being able to pull out those key ideas would be one of the best ways to support teachers. Working with new teachers, or teachers who are working in a new curriculum area, be it grade or subject, may need guidance for how to develop their lesson plans and how to build cohesive unit plans that will touch on the main ideas in the curriculum. As Drake, Reid and Koholon state in their structure of knowledge, the theory is the over arching idea, it has an enduring understanding which leads into the big concepts, from there it breaks down further into topics and facts. Helping teachers pick out the big ideas or enduring concepts and allowing them to explore the topics and facts that are relevant and important for their class will help teachers develop engaging curriculum,
I've been teaching in a program that does not have a curriculum. This is both a blessing and curse since I am able to pick and choose from different curriculum areas to support the needs of the students in my classroom. For a few years there wasn't any real continuity, we worked hard to build it, to have progression and I was very active in that process. We now have a curriculum we use to build life skills and functional academics for our students. It has progression and is written in student friendly language. After the curriculum was written I sat down with it and made a spreadsheet for myself, turning all the core concepts into "I know" statements that were followed with "I can" statements to show student understanding. For example the first column in this screenshot is "I know how to communicate and demonstrate my number sense" This is the Curricular competency, what we want them to know.
The I can statements that followed this theme start at I can rote count numbers 1-10, I can rote count 1-100, I can skip count by 2, 5, 10 and 25 and so on. For me this provided a map of the big ideas and I could then combine those big ideas into larger thematic units, or interdisciplinary curriculum ideas. This was a long process and took quite a few hours but in the end it was very beneficial to my curriculum planning. As an instructional leader in my program I have shared this document with other teachers in similar programs explaining how it works. This strategy is one I learned in a course at UBC and this would be my approach to dissecting the curriculum. We now make a copy of this document and share it with our parents so they can see the topics we are covering and what their students are learning within our program.
Our assessment guide to our parents shows Green- introduced, yellow-working on with support and Red - working on independently. If the area is white it means we have not addressed this topic yet. For our program we have four years to work with most students so by the end of grade 12 each box has some colour in it. The goal of our program is to have students as independent as possible, this helps guide our programming.
I have spent a lot of time following Shelley Moore for my own planning and my inclusion practices. She has so many wonderful examples of ways to make curriculum more assessible to all learners. Here Moore (2019) shares a story of the time she was co-teaching with another teacher and they were trying to figure out why they were teaching Napoleon to their classroom. In the end as they checked the curriculum they could not find any specific mention of Napoleon, but because he had been in the textbook they had erroneously began planning with him in mind. Once they figured out why Napoleon was being studied they were able to take that big idea and create a unit plan that was more relevant and flexible for their students. As we are facing a new curriculum I feel as a curriculum leader I am going to have spend some time finding those big rocks and maybe sifting through some of the topics and facts that have found their way into some of the curriculum. This will lead to a new way of planning, a new way of dissecting the curriculum. Moore (2019) also shares the idea of backwards design to help us with planning out curriculum which is a framework that will allow more inclusive planning for all students.
Being able to determine what's important in the new curriculum is going to be key. They have included three progressions, so that a teacher can see how Literacy, Numeracy and the Competencies (critical thinking, creativity and innovation, problem solving, research and managing information, communication, collaboration, citizenship, and personal growth and well being) are to be used across all grade levels. I would recommend that teachers spend some time dissecting any curriculum, and looking at it with a new lens.
Teachers are part of a professional body, we have years of experience and training to allow us to be experts in this field. We are moving to a curriculum that is more constructivist to one that is traditional. There are two areas of the new curriculum, and as an instructional leader it is my responsibility to help my fellow teachers figure out what is important to focus on. I believe that is the progressions, I believe they have got a great start to those progressions and teachers can use those areas to help them develop their curriculum. I think the compromise is to take the progressions and implement them in the current curriculum while the government tries to figure out where they went wrong with their draft in the curricular areas.
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I am quite impressed with your positive approach to curriculum development and planning Jenn. To see how you went from having no curriculum in your particular subject area to creating a system that works so well is a mark of a creative and insightful leader. I am also happy that you are sharing and passing on that wisdom to others in the profession. This journey is definitely a collaborative one and we will only be as strong as our weakest link. We all have to be willing to do the 'digging in' and work together as a team to see the changes we desire come to fruition. Teachers may not have much control over the new curriculum but we do have a responsibility to find and use wisely what works best for our students.
ReplyDeleteShe really did take an optimistic approach to it all! I agree O'Nesseia! Jennifer, your personal experience in the program you are in and having to dissect curriculum is an asset to our cohort. It provides us all with a new lens! Thank you.
DeleteThank you O'Nessia! I appreciate and value your comments.
DeleteJen, I agree with your statement that all parties would like insight into the curriculum. This is a hard thing to balance. It does feel like this curriculum rollout was less transparent than the previous one. The curriculum is such an important document like you have stated, and the teacher feels a personal connection. You have a unique situation as you choose your curriculum. Wording your outcomes to "I Know" can make your outcomes clear to the reader. I like that you did what was best for you. In our profession, planning is all about what benefits you. Thank you for your insight on the planning and curriculum through your inclusion lens.
ReplyDelete- Haley
You are most welcome!! I am happy to help in any way I can! Thank you for your kind words!
DeleteI enjoyed your response Jennifer. I think you have a very unique perspective to share with us on the topic of curriculum. I also appreciate your willingness to share the strategies you use to break apart your curriculum. I do have one wonder about your color coding system you use to share information with your parents. For students who can work independently on a skill, you use red. In my head I associate this with green, like the light system, green is good to go, yellow requires some support and red meaning that they cannot do the skill independently. That is just how I interpret it in my own mind. Something to consider?
ReplyDeleteThanks Vanessa, we did have a discussion about this, and as a team we thought we'd do red for our indicator, meaning we could stop explicitly teaching that particular outcome as the student was able to demonstrate independently that they were meeting the outcome. It is the one thing we talk about each year, so because it keeps coming up it may mean it is something we need to change.
DeleteHey Jen!
ReplyDeleteI love your idea on supporting teachers with breaking down the tough curriculum documents and helping them find the big ideas. Do you see that as the role of an administrator or can we build capacity within our buildings to make this happen? I also wonder, do you think that this is even more important now with at-home-learning?
As future educational leaders, we should be giving our teachers every chance to succeed and you do a great job at setting the stage for them to get there! Awesome blog!
I think I see this a role any teacher can take on, if you can find someone in your school who knows the curriculum they can help, I think as a leader it might but up to us to try to find who those natural curriculum leaders are in our schools.
DeleteI think finding the big rocks in the curriculum and planning to focus on those during online learning we are going to set our students up for the most success possible.