Fundamentals of Curriculum Development

 I am currently working as a middle school teacher at an international school in Thailand. One reason I took this job is because this is the first year the school has had a middle school. For the past 30 years, it has just been kindergarten to grade 5. Since it is the first year of middle school, I have been given a lot of freedom in my lesson development. I am a one-person department, so I have made all the units and assessments for my two subjects: English Language and Literature and Individuals and Societies. The way I try to make my units mirrors several of the attributes of the shifting minds model.    One thing that resonates with me about the shifting minds model is that it seems to focus a lot on problem-solving. With technology changing so quickly, new and unforeseeable problems seem to spring up overnight. A huge challenge for today's world is dealing with these problems in a quick and effective way. Like the shifting minds model mentions, I also try to give stu...

 1. Think about the standard of "goal-based design" (p.304), and the "Design-Down, Deliver-Up" Model (p.290), how does such philosophy resonate with curriculum alignment? 2. Imagine now you have total control over curriculum development and are creating a yearly planning guide - how do you plan to align assessments with learning objectives? How often and in what forms do you plan to assess the students?    1. When using goal-based design, alignment is extremely important. If the goals and objectives are the most important thing for the school and community at large, educators need to be sure the students are doing things that lead up to those goals. To do this, educators need to sure that the goals match up with the summative assessments and the formative learning experiences. If the summative assessment is not properly aligned with the learning goals, we cannot be sure if the students have met the objectives or not. Similarly, if the formative work is not aligned w...

Have you adopted Farrel's backwards planning model as a teacher in planning lessons? Does it help align written curriculum, taught curriculum and assessment? Why and why not? Think about the indicators that matter most to you - how do you plan to evaluate the classroom culture and teaching effectiveness in the future?      I do follow several elements of the backward design model in my lessons. After deciding the student objectives for the unit, I come up with an assessment, and then a learning plan so that students can meet those objectives. I create these learning plans based on aspects of the objectives. Typically I like the students to do tasks by using the 'ripple' strategy. That is, first, they do the task individually, then they go over what they have done with a partner, and finally, we share with the whole class. By doing it this way, students have the opportunity to do a task their own way before hearing the ideas of others. For the summative assessment, I will ...