The Future Starts Now

Up to this point in my educational career, I have had little if any introduction to the structural mechanics of the classroom.  In many other classes I have learned about aspects of  child development, educational philosophers and even educational theories but I have never learned about what goes into a curriculum or even how it is formed.  Until taking EDUC 4P19 I probably would've thought that creating a curriculum was pretty rudimentary and standard.  This is probably because my grade school and high school experience was one that encompassed the"old story".  I found that most of my classes had the same curriculum structure lessons every day, one test after a unit is done and assignments in between.  This made my personal education experience boring and stale as the curriculums in class were never exciting as they have the potential to be. After reading the  chapters and the lectures for this week, I realized that creating a curriculum is an incredibly long and well-though out process to ensure students are are not just memorizing facts but actually creating and understanding their own learning which will promote interest in the subject and student development.

From what I gathered from the reading, it is important to integrate the KBD method into your curriculum documents.  What KDB stands for is Know, Do and Be which overall provides a common vocabulary.  All three of these interconnect to provide an visual umbrella that creates a curriculum that is challenging and innovative yet promotes critical thinking in students.

The Know comprises the content that is mandated in curriculum documents.  In the "old story: the know was the information in your head that was filled from the teacher at the front of the room.  Even if you didn't know pay attention the whole year in class, you knew you could spend a couple hours the night before and memorize definitions, graphs, diagrams that would be on the test and still get a very good test score.  I wonder, is this truly "Knowing" the material or is it just remembering facts? I can remember countless times memorizing definitions and facts for highschool exams the night before even if I didn't truly understand them.  This is why the old "Know" is at the bottom of the structure of knowledge.  We as prospective teachers need to implement more Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings in our Know to ensure a true conceptual understanding.  And I do believe we are on the right path but we must continue and move forward.

The video below describes the Norwegian education system and provides a completely different perspective on what we North Americans think about Norwegian education.  Although as a country they do place an incredibly high amount of money and resources into their education system, as of late they have had high drop-out rates and less than average test scores?  This video describes that the curriculum must integrate technology (ICT Movement) to keep students interested in learning and overall make it an experience in which they can create, evaluate and challenge their thinking.

Moving on...

The Do contains twenty-first-century-skills which enhances creativity, critical thinking and collaboration to be prepared for the 21st century world.  I like the textbook, personally believe that in order for students to to be prepared for the 21st century world we must be giving them an opportunity to develop 21st century skills.  I feel that the root of these skills involve interactive knowledge with the use of technology.  But the students can't facilitate that themselves, they don't create the curriculum.  The curriculum is created from us, our experiences, we as prospective teacher's are already so familiar with technology in our everyday lives... why not use it for the better of our students?

The Be is the idea of incorporating innovative ideas into our curriculum that addresses respect and individual character development.  Although knowledge is incredibly important for students to gather in the education system I feel that students learning about their own identity is important.  And I would also like to note that as a human being we can constantly develop our character as new situations arise. This is why the Be is not only important in grade school it is very important in high school and even into adult life.

Overall I believe this curriculum framework, KDB is an incredibly useful way to make sure that all the essentially parts of the "new story" education system are met.  With this curriculum framework and the use of technology in the future I feel that us as prospective teachers will each provide a unique, challenging yet interactive environment for students to reach their true potential.

Reflection of Week 1

After completing the Week 1 chapter reading from "Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment" and learning from the first lecture, I found a few notable topics that I will be reflecting on.  Overall, from both the readings and the lecture material I found that the major topic that was to be learned this week was the idea that the education curriculum, classroom and teacher are changing from the "old story" to the "new story".  Essentially what this is, is the transition from the standard curriculum (standardize tests, teacher as dictator etc) to a much more integrated curriculum one that encourages the use of technology, productive teacher feedback etc. which all overall help for a much better development of all students.

First, as a prospective teacher I really found it interesting learning about the four models of the curriculum: traditional, project-based learning, holisitc and social reconstruction.  I felt that although it is great that most educational models of curriculum are shifting towards the "social reconstruction" model one in which promotes social justice and fairness it is important to note that some of the practices from other models should still be used today.  For example, although there are a lot of flaws found within the traditional model such as promoting poor student socialization and interaction, in every classroom there are certain aspects where direct instruction can be beneficial.  In fact, I believe that in certain situations direct instruction can be helpful as it reinforces mannerisms and that the teacher is the facilitator.  In relation to this idea, I also found it very interesting to learn that primary students learned Spanish language easier through story telling.  In my personal experiences in elementary school French class I too found learning French was a lot easier when we acted out plays and stories more so than just basic dictating.  Overall, I feel that all four models of the curriculum should be introduced when necessary as I believe they will provide the optimal classroom development for both students and teachers.


Next, I also found that the four differentiated learning strategies for teaching and assessing were helpful to me as a prospective teacher.  I feel that the DI research Carol Tomlinson did an excellent job when she created the four major learning strategies for students to cover all different abilities.  I do sort of feel that there may be a few more strategies for each specific teacher depending on their own personal experiences which maybe useful to them personally.


Third, until I read this chapter, I wouldn't have thought much in terms of a difference between individualization and personalization.  From what I gathered in the chapter, personalization is how the learner derive their own learning based skills based on past experiences and future goals.  In personalization however the teacher actually facilitates the learning.  Meanwhile individualization is when teachers actually change the structure of the lesson, subject etc. to gear it towards the needs of a specific learner.  Similarly differentiation means that the teacher change the curriculum structure as well but they change it for the entire class to reach a goal.  I really think that this will help me in the future as a prospective teacher as it will help me understand different approaches to deal with various scenarios.  I feel that in the "new story" the idea of the teacher changing the structure has sort of diminished and education has been more focused on individualization.  I think it has been focused more on students understanding how they learn best on their own with the teacher guiding them when necessary.

The fourth major aspect that I observed in the first lecture is the change of assessment from the "old story" to the "new story".  The new story attempts to relinquish old evaluation practices such as percentages, letter grades, bell curves etc. as this does not overall enhance student learning but it just  evaluates it.  I feel that students cannot truly learn from memorizing and practicing tests as this just reiterates that school is a game and not every student learns in that way (white privledge).  Learning about the new story assessment which allows for self and peer assessment, gives students a chance to observe and truly reflect on their work and allow them to answer the questions such as Am I truly satistified with my effort? and was there anything I could improve on?  This self-reflection has been proven to help students reach their goals as they are better understanding themselves as a learner.  Also, after reading about the productive teacher feedback in terms of assessment, I never really realized that there were ways to be positive and still provide constructive feedback to students which is helping me personally shift to my new story.  The only critisism that I had for this change was that I do feel that in certain situations standardized testing could be beneficial.  In many job environments students will have to deal with high pressure situations in which they must make a confident and formative decision. I feel that sometimes standardize testing can increase students skills to be able to work under pressure.

Finally, the final major aspect that I want to comment on is the use of technology in the classroom.  I was very excited to read about this in the chapter as myself feel that I am pretty technologically inclined due to my past experiences.  Agreeing with this article I feel that the incorporations of technologies such as digital media (youtube) social media (gmail, facebook, twitter), online lessons etc. would all be extremely beneficial to students providing ample opportunites for growth and development.  In relation to my own experience, this is huge for my future, as myself being a prospective geography teacher can now easily use GIS (Geographic Information System) softwares to teach children about various aspects of our world.

Introduction

Hello everyone I am a concurrent education student at Brock with a first teachable in Physical Geography and a second teachable in Math.  This blog will mostly be focused on my personal reflections on various topics discussed in EDUC 4P19  Hope you all find this blog useful.