U NIT 3 C URRICULUM & A SSESSMENT Essential Questions

1. What is taught in schools? 2. How is school curriculum developed? 3. What methods can be used to assess student learning? 4. How can teachers develop high quality classroom assessments? 5. How can teachers manage Career and Technical student organizations and Future Educations of America student organizations? 6. What forces shape curriculum development?

If you could summarize it into one sentence with three attributes, what is taught in schools?

#1: What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? What Aims, Goals, and Objectives should be sought? Educational objectives become the criteria for selecting materials, content outlined, instructional methods developed, and tests prepared.

Objectives are not activities the instructor must do, rather statements of change for students. Objectives should specify what the students are expected to do with these elements such as apply them to illustrations in his/her life, etc. Objectives can be indicated as generalized patterns (To Develop Appreciation, To develop broad interests.) These are more goals than objectives. It is necessary to specify the content to which this behavior applies. Should specify the Kind of Behavior and the Content or Area in which the behavior is to operate.

To create a simple web page using a text editor. To apply Dewey's theory of the child and the curriculum to the process of developing a curriculum module. Upon completion of this module, students will be able to: a)compute the selling price of an automobile given information about list price, taxes, options, and destination charges b)construct a timeline showing the relationship among at least 20 major events in the Roman empire c)describe the steps necessary for creating complete Web- based curriculum modules

#2. What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes? Criteria for selecting experiences; are they: valid in light of the ways in which knowledge and skills will be applied in out-of-school experiences? feasible in terms of time, staff expertise, facilities available within and outside of the school, community expectations? optimal in terms of students' learning the content? capable of allowing students to develop their thinking skills and rational powers?

Curriculum Content Criteria for selecting content: what will lead to student self-sufficiency? what is significant? what is valid (authentic, "true")? what is interesting? note: student may not even KNOW his own interests what is useful? what is learnable? what is feasible?

#3. How can the educational experiences be organized? Education experiences must be organized to reinforce each other Vertical vs. horizontal organization Continuity - refers to the vertical reiteration of major curricular elements. Reading social studies materials continued up through higher grades Sequence - refers to experiences built upon preceding curricular elements but in more breadth and detail. Sequence emphasizes higher levels of treatment. Integration - unified view of things. Solving problems in arithmetic as well as in other disciplines.

We aim for educational effectiveness and EFFICIENCY. Most institutionalized education is MASS education : we want to be able to teach GROUPS instead of individuals. Most education is DEPARTMENTALIZED, because we expect someone trained in a specific topic to be more likely to be able to teach that topic. (This is based upon the notion that WORKERS will have higher productivity if they do the same thing over and over again, related to the "social efficiency" theories of Frederick Taylor.)

#4. How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained? Assessment and testing? Multiple choice? Open Response? Success at a later point in life? What do you think?

#1: What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? #2. What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes? #3. How can the educational experiences be organized? #4. How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?

Assignment: individual lesson plan Begin your individual lesson plan (to be included in your integration project). 1.Type in a memo format addressed to me. ( TO:, FROM:, SUBJECT:, DATE 2.Think first: what are you going to teach the students? 3.Look up your standard/core content area (number and details) on the Kentucky Dept of Ed website. 4.Write two objectives for the lesson. 5.TURN IN FOR APPROVAL