Standards EDU 300 Newberry College Jennifer Morrison

Standards What is a curriculum and its components? How do units work in a curriculum? What are standards? Why do I need them? Which standards should inform my curriculum design? By the end of class you should be able to answer these questions.

What are the ideas, skills, and content important to teach in your subject area and at your level? Have students discuss their answers with group members.

Teaching and Learning: What are the components? Curriculum Instruction Assessment Environment Students How do these components fit?

Curriculum A curriculum is what is taught to students at each grade level and in each subject. A curriculum includes… Content Information Processes /Skills Connections (horizontal and vertical) Experiences Attitudes Thinking

Units are your building blocks. A unit of study should… Be student-centered (consider student developmental levels, ability levels, learning styles, interests, and other needs). Support conceptual learning, higher order thinking, and application of concepts. Align to standards in order to insure curriculum meets state standards.

Content Standards Content standards provide a curricular framework. They can be called academic standards, curriculum standards, etc. Content standards are statements of intended learning outcomes for students at each grade level and/or in specific courses. They identify agreed-upon areas of student learning considered most important for academic proficiency. Ask students and discuss why standards came into being. Historically, the standards movement started with the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 – standards were supposed to create a new level of rigor and coherence in the curriculum (after the wishy-washy experimentalism of the 60s and 70s), create equity, and allow Americans to assess how well public schools are working. Share your experience and feelings about standards.

In the absence of standards, what do we tend to teach? http://www.popmodal.com/video/934/The-Sound-of-Music-My-Favorite-Things In the absence of standards, it’s easy to end up teaching a curriculum of “my favorite things.” Have students look back at their lists from Slide 3. How did they make their choices? Standards are good in that they provide vertical and horizontal articulation, provide a foundation of teacher dialogue, etc. They help us define our objectives and thus our assessments.

By themselves, state and/or national standards… Are not a curriculum. Are not a sequence of instruction. They do not indicate classroom activities, materials, instructional strategies, approaches, or practices. They should only provide a guide or framework for curriculum content. Standards can be bad when they are misunderstood and misused. Remember – one of the things that comes along with standards is standardized testing.

Professional Standards SC State Standards http://ed.sc.gov/topics/curriculumstds NCTM – National Council of Teachers of Mathematics NCTE/IRA – National Council of Teachers of English NCSS – National Council for the Social Sciences NASPE – National Association for Sport and Physical Education NAEYC – National Association for the Education of Young Children NSTA – National Science Teachers Association Professional Standards Make the point that we are focusing on content standards. NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) IRA (International Reading Association) Standards Overview = http://www.ncte.org/standards Content Standards = http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Books/Sample/StandardsDoc.pdf NCSS (National Council for the Social Sciences) NASPE (National Association for Sport and Physical Education) Standards Overview = http://www.aahperd.org/naspe/standards/nationalStandards/PEstandards.cfm NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) Content Standards (Chapter 6) = http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=4962&page=103 National Standards http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards

Three Tasks Look at our class syllabus – How are standards informing the design of this class? Read M’s blog post, “Cherry-Picking Standards.” http://artofeducating.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/cherry-picking- standards/ Find and print copies of the standards (state, professional, and/or national) for your subject and grade level ONLY!

What’s Due?