Curriculum Decisions (Question #3)

The curriculum is decided by the Iowa Common Core. There is one science teacher for each grade at the middle school level, so the science teachers negotiated which standards would be covered in which grades (they divided them up), allowing for the standards that would be covered in the fifth grade (which is still at the elementary school) and in high school. Once the standards were divided up among the teachers, my cooperating teacher worked backwards from the Common Core to form her lesson plans. There are textbooks that align with the Common Core, to help her plan lessons and units that meet the standards. 

It is tricky business to get all of the standards in, and some of the topics she used to cover no longer fit in the curriculum. Depending on the level of the students and the number of students with special needs, she may be able to get through more or less material. For instance, she will have a unit where students build a solar car, if she has the time this year. Currently, she covers: the scientific method, chemistry/physical science, genetics, the human body, and energy. 

Former lesson plans have been changed due to other means beyond her control, and change is not necessarily a negative. She is now incorporating the one-to-one computer access her students have into her lesson planning, so that they are learning to research and posting their findings on Google Drive. Unfortunately, visitors are no longer allowed to visit the coal plant after 9/11, but she used to be able to take her students there instead of just describing it to them. 

She prefers to teach most of her material through lab work, and her lesson plans generally follow the format: Activity --> Direct Instruction --> Group work. I have noticed that she has found a lot of attention-grabbing, two minute videos off of YouTube, and she has not provided more than a 15 or 20 minute lecturette the three times I've observed her teach thus far. I have also seen a lot of positive examples of her students helping each other out (e.g., finding websites), and I think it makes sense that her students (who may be completely learning some of the material for the very first time) would need a lot of active engagement with these concepts in order to learn them. 

There is a question of how far in depth she needs to go in order for her students to have achieved mastery level of a standard. She does not just want to check standards off of a list but to spend the whole year covering 6 - 8 topics in depth; introducing her students to a concept is a great start but does not mean that they will have learned it. 

It sounds as though, like everything in education, the issue of curriculum is not cut-and-dried. Experienced teachers continue to undergo professional development to inform their lesson planning, and a tried-and-true curriculum could be significantly altered, depending on a variety of developments in our society.