By Lisa Nuss

I was hired to write a series of curriculum guides for an online publishing company circa 2012.  From a library of a local teaching college, I studied best practices along with new scientific understandings of how we learn. I have detailed guides for 1st through 4th grades, with overviews on creating curriculum, and then specific details on math, reading, writing, social studies, science, art, drama and music. Please contact me for ordering information from the backlog.

For a sample, this is a reprint of my Guide to 2nd Grade Curriculum (please don’t reuse without permission):

Lesson 2 – Creating Curriculum

1. Learner-Centered Concept to Designing Curriculum

One of the major developments in curriculum over the last several decades has been a shift to presenting material in a format that is “learner-centered.” Making the shift to this style of teaching is more an attitude than a technique, according to the authors of Learner Centered Teaching[1].

The goal is to cultivate an environment that encourages learning, in contradiction to the old model of the strict teacher in the front of the room lecturing while students sit quietly and listen. To some, this new approach appears “touchy feely” and many may think students need a “firm hand;” but as mentioned in Lesson 1, recent scientific studies back up these methods to learning.

Five features that comprise a learner-centered approach are:

1. Respect for students – Approaching students with respect can create a positive feedback loop. Students who are treated with respect will value themselves and can, in turn, value and respect the teacher.
2. Acceptance of students – Accepting students and their ideas allows them the confidence to continue to grow and change; in contrast, a student who fears judgment will close down and become defensive.
3. Effective communication in the classroom – This includes two-way communication: the students need to understand the teacher, but also the teacher needs to understand the students.
4. The needs, problems and feelings of students are valued – We now know that the so-called “rational,” intellectual, learning self cannot be separated from the emotional self. Second graders have a lot of feelings and experiences to make sense of, and these will impact and direct their learning abilities.
5. Permissiveness – In this context, permissiveness does not mean “touch feely” – it means giving students freedom to have their own ideas and beliefs.

The whole concept of learner-centered teaching upends our old ideas of the proper authority of a teacher. This teaching approach exercises authority in a different way. When teachers wield authority in a way that shows intolerance for others, it merely teaches students to also be intolerant. When authority is wielded by an emotionally secure teacher who doesn’t need to defend all of her own beliefs, then the student is freed to flourish in a safe environment.

 

1. Presenting Curriculum That Engages Students

Presenting curriculum content in an environment where students feel comfortable expressing their ideas and are not embarrassed by their mistakes has repeatedly been shown to increase overall student performance.

In Best Practice: Today’s Standards for Teaching and Learning in America’s Schools, the authors note that studies have shown students taught with a more engaging, interactive curriculum approach have posted significantly higher scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and other reading achievement tests. The method of teaching is as important as the curriculum content, in affecting what students learn.

But how to engage students is a challenging question. The Best Practice book authors culled recommendations from various disciplines, and found an “unrecognized consensus” in how to shift towards this new model. They provide a guide of what to do more and what to do less – some of those concepts are excerpted in the chart below:

LESS IS MORE

Common Recommendations of National Curriculum Reports

LESS	MORE
Lecturing	Experiential, hands-on learning
Student passivity	Active learning with students talking and collaborating
One-way transmission of information	Diverse roles for teachers in addition to lecturers: coaches, demonstration, modeling
Rewarding silence in the classroom	More attention to a variety of learning styles
Class time spent on fill-in the blank worksheets	More emphasis on high-order thinking and a field’s concepts
Rote memorization

Adapted from: Best Practice: Today’s Standards for Teaching and Learning in America’s Schools, 3^rd Ed

 

The author of Primary Understanding: Education in Early Childhood, Kieran Egan, suggests one place to start is to rethink our perception of young children. Instead of thinking of them as blank slates, value their inherent abilities and experiences thus far. Envision your role as teacher is to overlay a structure on their already full and lively minds:

• Children aren’t blank slates – Egan argues for an approach that combines two things: (1) developing a child’s innate abilities and awarenesses, with (2) teaching the child the formal disciplines of knowledge and thinking in our culture.
• Engage children’s imaginations – In the shift from passive to active instruction, well-meaning teachers may want to engage their students but not know how. One simple technique, Egan suggests, is not to give students mind-numbingly boring assignments; value and engage children’s rich imaginations.

Egan suggests a rule of thumb is: if it’s uninteresting to an adult, it will likely be uninteresting to a child. So many early learning materials and textbooks extract content completely out of context, and transform it into boring, meaningless exercises. This type of teaching is not only boring, but educators believe it can have serious negative consequences; it can undermine student learning and risks permanently turning them off from school.

• Don’t underestimate students – We often appraise intelligence by accumulated knowledge, which perpetually puts younger people at a disadvantage. Egan stresses that while young children may know less than most adults, they are no less intelligent.

Two common mistakes made when presenting curriculum are to: (1) Begin teacher planning with what students need to know in the end and simply work backwards, or (2) Take pieces of content and simplify them. Egan believes the fix is to concentrate on meaning when planning curriculum. It’s difficult for learners to grasp something’s importance if it’s taught out of context, without showing its impact in the real world.

• Infuse curriculum with rich content – Egan explains that we often simplify for children because we believe they don’t know the topic. While it’s true young children may not know the specific facts of a topic, they do know and can relate to the higher level concepts of a lesson.

The great stories of western civilization are full of dramatic conquests and losses – students can relate to stories that explore fear and relief, courage and cowardice, good and bad.  Egan writes that the portal into effective teaching is precisely to tap into children’s own dramatic thoughts, hopes and fears – they can relate to those feelings, and build on their knowledge. 

• Move away from the trivial – Many learning activities for children are trivial and  sentimental. They are missing the powerful emotional and intellectual content that exists in the real world – and in children’s lives.  Many of us recall certain favorite teachers; they are likely the ones who found ways to bring these dramatic and resonating qualities into their classroom.

 

• Multiple Intelligences & Learning Styles

Diversity is the new norm. Few classrooms in the U.S. lack students from different ethnic backgrounds. Some might still be clustered by common economic backgrounds, but within those classrooms, there will still be diversity in learning styles and abilities.

Part of the acceptance of multiple learning abilities and styles is the realization that there is no one “right” learning style. The old model was focused on teaching to the average student. The goal is no longer to teach to the average student. Some call this curriculum approach “differentiation,” and it’s a key concept to achieve engaging, authentic teaching.

The concepts of learner-centered teaching — respecting a student’s background and current level of abilities — moves the curriculum away from one dominant but narrow focus and broadens teaching. The dominant but narrow focus is no longer “normal” – in fact, there is no “normal.”

The old concept of “intelligence” of the book-smart, analytical, test-taking variety hit a peak in the 1970s with the fad of IQ testing. Educators have since realized IQ tests and many standardized tests measured only narrow abilities of memory recall and abstract reasoning.

The psychologist Howard Gardner believed we measured intelligence too narrowly. Rather than a focus on abilities within the isolated, testing environment – he thought human intelligence should be measured more broadly, to include:

(1) Ability to solve problems

(2) Ability to generate new problems to solve

(3) Ability to make something or offer a valued service

Gardner proposed seven different dimensions to intelligence:

Dimension of Intelligence	How They Learn
verbal/linguistic	in words
logical/mathematical	by reasoning
visual/spatial	images and pictures
body/kinesthetic	somatic sensations – dancing, running, touching
musical/rhythmic	recognizes rhythms and melodies; listening
interpersonal	bouncing ideas off other people
Intrapersonal	deeply inside of selves; thinking about thinking

 

Scientists believe students possess each dimension to varying degrees, and that the dimensions can be developed. Abilities will vary according to: (1) biological factors – (genetic traits and any physical limitations), (2) personal life history (types of intelligences exposed to), and (3) cultural and historical background.

Researchers have proposed several additional dimensions to intelligence, including: emotional, spiritual, moral, and creativity, among others.

What are the implications for a teacher? The author of Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom writes that children will show proclivities at an early age. By the time they start school, they will have developed some more than others. Most students have strengths in several areas.

Clearly, most teaching in the U.S. has been targeted to the verbal/linguistic dimension, and to a lesser extent, the logical/mathematical. One simple approach for teachers in planning lessons is to move away from those two dimensions and pick at least one other dimension to incorporate. Given the hegemony of the other two, any activity that engages the rest of the dimensions would be a start in the right direction.

Make use of resources that provide suggested activities to engage the whole student. In Seven Ways of Teaching: The Artistry of Teaching with Multiple Intelligences, David Lazear, presents many practical activities for use in the classroom.  Just this book alone (or another like it) can provide activities to engage all seven intelligences throughout a school term or year.

1. Lesson Planning

In Teaching Strategies: A Guide to Effective Instruction, the authors urge teachers to think of planning as an aid to organize their curriculum and delivery.  They emphasize there is no one best way to plan. Some teachers engage in highly structured planning, while other work from more general notes; most fall somewhere in-between.

Ideally, you should develop a plan that helps you meet your curriculum goals but also allows flexibility.  However you plan, you should identify the content of your lessons and the methods for presenting that content. The Teaching Strategies[2] text identifies six factors that should be included in your lesson plans:

(1) Student considerations

• Content and process Considerations
• Time considerations
• School considerations
• Resources
• Teacher considerations

The authors suggest you start with any curriculum guides available from your school. They will help build your framework, and allow you to see what the students were taught in the year prior to your class level. Then look to textbooks or other materials available. Finally, glean additional ideas from many sources including colleagues, retail stores, the Internet, local libraries, museums, and government agencies.

Planning should include long-range and short-range goals. The Teaching Strategies text breaks lesson planning down into three cycles — from long-range, to individual lessons and units, and finally to evaluation:

Stage 1 – Long-range Goals	Stage 2 – Unit & Lesson Planning	Stage 3 – Post-Lesson
Standards/Goals	Unit subject	Unit and lesson evaluation
Long-range plans for year	Concepts	Reflections and notes
Content	Questions and generalizations
Processes	Unit rationale
Student skills and readiness levels	Goals and objectives
Learning activities	Resources and materials
	Learning activities
	Assessment tools
	Lesson planning (for each piece of the unit)

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Richard Arends & Ann Kilcher, Teaching for Student Learning: Becoming an Accomplished Teacher  (2010: Routledge)

Thomas Armstrong, Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom (Assoc. for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, VA: 1994)

Kieran Egan, Primary Understanding: Education in Early Childhood

Routledge: New York, London, 1988)

 David Lazear, Seven Ways of Teaching: The Artistry of Teaching with Multiple Intelligences (Skylight Publishing: Palatine, Illinois: 1991)

 Donald Orlich, et al., Teaching Strategies: A Guide to Effective Instruction, 7^th Ed. (Houghton Mifflin: 2004)

Gerald Pine & Angelo Boy, Learner Centered Teaching: A Humanistic View

(Love Publishing Co., Denver, CO: 1977)

Steven Zemelman, et al., Best Practice: Today’s Standards for Teaching and Learning in America’s Schools, 3^rd Ed.,  (Heinemann: 2005)

[1] Gerald Pine & Angelo Boy, Learner Centered Teaching: A Humanistic View

(Love Publishing Co., Denver, CO: 1977).

[2] Donald Orlich, et al., Teaching Strategies: A Guide to Effective Instruction, 7^th Ed. (Houghton Mifflin: 2004), p. 120.