Curriculum+Development+2009+Overview

This summer, several Curriculum Projects are underway at the High School. This page is designed to provide access to tools and templates to complete the work. **Curriculum 2009 Home**

Curriculum and Learning Good curriculum provides a road map to developing student understanding by identifying critical knowledge and skill and the connections that instruction will foster that take the form of "aha's," insights and real understanding. It allows teachers to plan learning experiences with an end in mind. Curriculum development should always honor three big questions:
 * What insights or understanding do I want to foster in the students?
 * What knowledge and skill is essential to learn and practice to achieve those understandings?
 * What original products or performances will students create that will help students develop and exhibit that knowledge?

Good curriculum honors how the brain learns- by connecting new knowledge to previously learned knowledge. Thus, good curriculum design consciously seeks to ensure that insights, knowledge and skill is connected to other critical elements:
 * The Role of Alignment **:
 * **//Program Alignment //** : What are the larger ends of our program? What is the purpose or mission of our program? High School English Language Arts teachers can view their program work on the HS ELA Big Idea s page.
 * **//Course Alignment//**: What is the purpose of my course and how does this course meet our programatic goals?
 * **//Unit Alignment//**: What are the big ideas of this unit? How well does this unit help meet the course goals?
 * **//Knowledge and Skill Alignment//**: Is the knowledge and skill identified absolutely aligned to the unit's big ideas?
 * **//Product Alignment/ Assessment//**: Is what I'm asking the kids to produce valid evidence that they've understood the unit's big ideas? Are they truly an expression of the targeted outcomes of the course? Do they represent evidence that mission of the program is being achieved?

Curriculum Design Process : In designing your curriculum, follow this general process:
 * **//Course Thinking://** Think about your course-
 * What is the purpose of your course? How does it connect to your program?
 * What are the biggest ideas, knowledge and skill your kids should learn by being in the course?
 * What big or "essential" questions should the course answer?
 * What is the "benchmark" product or performance that successful students in your course should be able to produce?
 * **//Course Framing://** Think about how to organize the knowledge....
 * How should the knowledge and skill be grouped and delivered?
 * What 4 or 5 chunks or units should the course have?
 * What frame should be used as an "umbrella" to connect each of the units?
 * **//Unit Thinking://** Think about how each unit....
 * What is the unit a "study in"? What bigger ideas and concepts frame the unit?
 * What critical knowledge and skill will the unit deliver?
 * What are the essential questions that connect the knowledge and skill?
 * What original products and performances should the students be able to create by the end of the unit?

For more specific questions and guidance, see the Curriculum Design Process Page.