Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Contributed by : Nancy A. Clarke and Shirley B. Stow June 2006 Charter School Monthly
Plan the Work...Work the Plan! In the April issue of the Charter School Monthly we sought to answer the question What is curriculum? In that article we defined curriculum as a written plan which drives instruction. It delineates the skills and concepts taught and evaluated to enhance student achievement. Composed of a content area philosophy, strands with definitions, program goals, aligned scope and sequence, learner outcomes, and assessment tools, it is intentionally designed to meet district, state, and national standards. Now, we will describe briefly how it is developed. We label this procedure as Process = Products. You will recall that the written curriculum is only part of the widely published concept displayed as a triangle, as it relates to student learning. Teachers and instructional leaders meet to work on this process, using a curriculum development framework. This leads to the products in a given content area, for example, Reading, Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, or Social Studies. Writing Curriculum When writing curriculum consider (a) principles of curriculum development, (b) stages of the writing process, (c) characteristics of technical writing, and (d) premises on which the process has been built. The principles of curriculum development that need to be followed as the work progresses include these: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. A consensus-seeking approach = working to reach agreement among the curriculum writers, or at least a commitment that everyone will support the ideas discussed. Balance = includes a mixture of simple and more complex skills/concepts. Teamwork = working in a collaborative manner. Less is more = focusing on the essential skills/concepts and not including the whole universe of learning. Alignment = matching the skills/concepts to an external set of standards (e.g., the Arizona Academic Standards) for a content area. Articulation = expressing coherence as one moves from one grade level to the next. Diversity = incorporating ideas from both sides of an issue.
Stages of the Curriculum Writing Process Stages of the writing process also play a major role as the curriculum is written. 1. Pre-writing is the preparation time when a review of the educational environment is conducted (what the test data look like; what the research says should be considered). When this stage is complete, several components of a framework will have been written. (These are described later.) Drafting is authoring a section of the framework. Early attempts are very tentative. Revising is deliberately reworking what has been written to improve the quality. Editing is the refining process. Publishing is the dissemination of the products.
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Characteristics of Technical Writing Characteristics of technical writing are used so the materials are user-friendly. These include format so that everyone has a common language to use with the guide; rules, which include how to write a given component; consistency, which allows the writers/users to move from one content area to another and know the expectations; and repetition, which is very important to users when more than one content area guide is used by the teachers.
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Curriculum Development as the Big Picture Curriculum development must be systemwide. It helps teachers see connections among the skills/concepts and find resources. When teachers examine their own teaching/learning environment in the context of the whole school, they can make decisions about what to teach based on the content of the curriculum guide. When we facilitate the development process with charter schools, we provide draft copies of all components of the framework. As we work through the process, the curriculum documents become the committees product because they are personalized for the school, yet are aligned with the Arizona Academic Standards. Funding for this endeavor comes from various sources, depending how the schools financial resources are managed. Some sources for funding are grant awards, title monies, start-up funds, and general funds within
the school. In the work that Phil Schlechty has done it can be noted that the demands of modern society are such that Americas schools must now provide what they may never have provided before: a first-rate academic education for all students. This can happen only when everyone who works in the school understands the definition of curriculum and when a procedure, such as Process = Products, is used so that everyone can answer the question, What is the curriculum development process? that this school follows. Nancy A. Clarke is an educational consultant who facilitates this process. Her experiences include 25 years as a classroom teacher, an elementary principal, and a director of curriculum in Arizona schools. Over the past 10 years she has served as a professional development trainer in schools for curriculum/assessment development and educational leadership, working with public, private, and charter schools nationwide. Contact her at rnclarke37@dancris.com. Shirley B. Stow is an educational consultant working with schools to improve the teaching/learning environment in public, private, and charter schools nationwide. She has been a classroom teacher, an elementary principal, a curriculum director, and the director of a research-based school improvement model center at Iowa State University. Over the last 25 years she has served as a professional development trainer in schools for curriculum/assessment development and educational leadership across the United States, in the Department of Defense Dependents School in the Panama Canal, in Western Europe, and in the Taipai American School in Taiwan. Contact her at sbstow@qwest.net.