Enacting Curriculum

The purpose of curriculum is to develop student understanding and ability to apply knowledge to concepts.

If I understand the “Backward Design” approach correctly, it is the approach taken in many classrooms today. A “Common Assessment” has been created in advance that becomes the guide to what students should be learning in the classroom, demonstrates how students can apply knowledge and skills, and a helps the teacher make decisions on activities and accommodations that will help students become successful.

As a special education teacher, designing curriculum is minimum in regarding the content for Geometry, but developing strategies and accommodations is where my knowledge begins. In my classes, I use hands on activities, repetitive and guided practices, visual, written and verbal prompts and cues. I give several informal assessments weekly including; bellringers that are from previous lessons and exit slips from the daily lesson, quizzes, wipe boards, thumbs up, “paper wad fights”, post-it notes. My learning targets and objectives are similar to with the regular education teachers; however they are adapted to fit the needs and understanding of students with special needs. I use the common assessment as a guide to what my students need to be learning and assess if the understood the content. I use the data from the common assessments to make decisions on reteaching or continuing with other concepts.

Curriculum Design

After taking care of family needs and students needs, I finally finished reading the articles and attempted to decipher the language and develop answers to the questions related to "task one". While reading I continued asking myself, "What is curriculum?" and "Why is curriculum important?", and kept returning to my experience. I consider curriculum is my teaching guide to developing the essential questions and objectives in the subject. In Wraga's article, "subject centered curriculum" is what high school curriculum tends to be designed to follow, as a high school special education teacher we focus on the core content and program of studies for content area and teach to high stakes tests. It has been my experience that subject centered curriculum is not conducive to student learning and application across all subject areas.
In the article, The Futility of Trying to Teach Everything of Importance." the modern curriculum seems to be ideal for students that are struggling. Modern curriculum gives teacher the flexiblibity and creativity to develop lessons based on core content that is essential to students futures, as we all know that each person learns differently and at various paces.