Curriculum & Instruction

It is our number one job as teachers to help our students grow and to help them to become responsible and contributing members of society. Because of this, when delivering curriculum and instruction to our students, we need to make sure that what they are learning is something that will be useful to them in the future. We need to make sure we are explaining to the students why they are learning things and what they are learning can be used for. You should never teach something to your students “just because”, you need to have a better reason than that! Even though there is TONS to teach to students in a given school year, we should ALWAYS find meaning in the content we are teaching the students and convey that meaning to the students. As teachers, we need to make sure students can see how important the material they are learning is going to be for them in their lives. This is why we must look at what we need to teach and delve deeper into that standard to find what the most significant thing is in that topic. Having a “focused curriculum” is extremely important and what is more important is pointing out your objectives specifically to students. Once you have decided what you want to teach the students, you should write out the objectives for what you want your students to take from that lesson and inform them of these objectives before you begin a unit of study. When students are aware of what they are supposed to take from a lesson, it helps them to be more focused on the end goal as well. To start out though, you need to know what knowledge the students already have, so that when you do teach the lesson you know how the best way to deliver the content will be.  After you asses what they know, you can craft your lesson, and come up with a way for those students to show what they actually learned after the lesson is done. Your summative assessment needs to measure what you actually taught them and give students a chance to use their knowledge to communicate what they know in a meaningful way. You would never ask students to name all the letters of the alphabet as an assessment after teaching a unit on addition. That just doesn’t make sense. That is why I think backwards design is so important. You start your instruction with an end goal in mind, and your entire lesson is crafted out of what you want your students to do after you have taught the material. You also need to make the lesson engaging for all of your students, which means getting to know your students and their differing learning profiles. A great teacher should be able to merge the importance of a topic they are teaching and be able to create an environment of learning. A place where every student has access to materials and activities that invites the student to use their individual strengths and abilities to create and build upon ideas. We need to make our lessons interesting and teach them in a way that allows all of the students to gain something from it, whether they are visual, auditory, or hands-on learners. We need to remember that every single child in our class is different and make sure our classrooms are a place where they can grow, hone in on their individual talents and use those talents to become successful.
Tips For More Engaging Instruction