Curriculum Plan Reflection

The curriculum planning project was probably the most challenging and time consuming project we had in this course. It took a lot of thought, planning, effort, and creativity. Despite that this project had many components and took lots of time and preparation, I gained so much out of it. I have never created a curriculum plan before, and considering this will be something I will have to do as a teacher, I’m so glad I got to practice with it. We were split up by grade bands (K-2, 3-5, 6-8), and we each had to create a curriculum plan for our bands. Sarah, Kaitlin, and I worked on K-2. First, we had to figure out a general curriculum plan outline; we had to figure out where we wanted to put domains for each quarter/semester (and for how many weeks the domain would be covered) for each grade level. This took a lot of careful thought because we wanted to make sure the order of our domains made sense, properly built off of each other between each quarter, semester, and grade, and allowed the students to access prior knowledge. Then, for each grade level, we had to think about our objectives, which would be our main focus domain, the review, objectives, a modeling and exploratory/investigation task, and an end of the semester activity. The main challenge was thinking about the modeling and exploratory/investigation tasks because we wanted them to be hands-on, interactive, student-centered, engaging, and meaningful. Our goal was to create valuable activities that deepen and extend the students’ understanding of the concepts. Also, the end of the semester activity was a HUGE challenge. I think this was primarily challenging due to the fact that we had to incorporate multiple domains within the activity. However, for both the modeling and exploratory/investigation tasks and the end of the semester activities, I think my group ended up coming up with innovative and rich activities for each grade level. Lastly, we had to provide a justification for the order of our curriculum plan, CCSSM SMP standards, and NCTM standards. We also had to create a video about our curriculum plan so our peers could learn about it. My group members and I decided to include a Powerpoint in our video (which we narrated) along with some other visuals. I think our video ended up being a success and clearly conveyed our curriculum plan. Throughout this process, I learned the reality of curriculum planning in an actual classroom. It is something that teachers really need to be proactive about. Teachers cannot wait until the last minute to plan, but rather they need to be organized and take the time to carefully plan an appropriate curriculum. I also learned the importance of creating engaging, interactive activities as well as making sure the content builds off of each other within the grade and throughout the grade levels. It was a great experience to create this curriculum and made me feel more comfortable and knowledgeable for when I have to do this in the future.

It was really interesting to watch the 3-5 and 6-8 videos in class, because it was neat to see how they organized their curriculum as well as to see how the content and domains overlapped/built off of each other.  I observed that in lower grades, the domains are similar and build off of each other really well, and in the upper grades, the domains also seem similar and build off of each other really well. In other words, it appears that K-2 flow really well, 3-5 flow really well, and 6-8 flow really well, but where I see the largest gap is between those grade bands (i.e. between 2 and 3 and between 5 and 6). Furthermore, I noticed that some of the domains (i.e. Geometry) are seen throughout all grade levels while some of the domains (i.e. Numbers and Operations in Base 10, Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Measurement and data, etc.) are overlapped between K-2 and 3-5. It appears that K-5 has the most overlap/similarity of domains, but the content is most different in 6-8 (probably because students are starting to work with more challenging, abstract, and critical thinking concepts). Moreover, it seems that in 3-5 they really start digging into fractions, which students didn’t do in K-2, and in 6-8 they build upon the fractions in 3-5 by discussing ratios/proportions. I think overlap between grades is actually helpful for students, because it reminds them of what they already learned (prior knowledge) and prepares them for the next concept that builds off of that first concept. Additionally, I noticed that measurement and data is not covered in 6-8 and that may because they continue to work with measuring and data within geometry. I learned a lot throughout this process and cannot wait to apply what I learned from the curriculum plans in the future. 

Thanks for a great summer session course! :-)