Task Two

Thanks to some snow and a day home from work I was able to get through both task one and task two. It was a lot of reading!!! Now I will have some time to finish my KTIP!!

The purpose of curriculum is to organize student learning. I really liked the Backward Design approach to writing curriculum. This approach was designed to benefit all students but it seemed to be a great way for students with disabilities to learn. This approach had teachers creating an essential question, know their students prior knowledge, develop assessment and then design your activities. I belive that knowing students prior knowledge is one of the key elements that I liked about this approach. I also thought that developing assessment first before designing activities would allow teachers to know what they expected of the students before they created the activity.

Curriculum is designed for the teachers and the students. In Morey Schwartz's article it states that curriculum is designed for the students but must be designed to engage. This article talked about disjuncture that would leave the students wanting to fix the disjuncture through learning and discussion. I believe that all teachers want some control of curriculum. We like to be creative with our lessons and we also know our students better than anyone else.

For me currently I have very little control of curriculum because I teach an intervention that is designed for me. Whenever I get the chance I enjoy doing some things on my own. My students also enjoy a break for the workbook and reading that we do. We have done some writing and the students really enjoyed the change.

Task One

Although long, I really enjoyed the Applebee article. The goal of curriculum is to align materials to best benefit the students in their learning. Curriculum gives us the ability to look what is being taught, how it is being taught and the structure at which it is being taught. Applebee's five features of curriculum was the most relevant of the readings. The first feature, ownership and the last feature, transfer of control were the most important to me. Applebee says that students need to take ownership of their activities, this is a great idea but I wonder how to incorporate it. When I teach I get a lot of, "do we have to do this?" The other feature was transfer of control back to the students where they feel they accomplished something useful. This feature I liked the most and it made sense to me.

The role of knowledge in curriculum I took from the Wiggins article. The role of knowledge is the ability to teach students to continue to question and seek more knowledge. How do you teach that, by making curriculum relevant to the real world experiences. Wiggins explained that teachers need to not always be the only answer that students need to continue to question and explore the truth. Teaching from authority with all the answers stops students from seeking more knowledge.

The goal of education is to teach and prepare students for a life of questioning, seeking truths and exploring what they have learned in the real world experiences that they will have when they leave high school.

My First Blog

Well, I feel that I know everybody pretty well now after listening to the audio feeds.

I am a special education teacher at Campbell County High School. This is my third year teaching and I love my job very much. I am married and have a 15 year old son named Austin that goes to Ryle High School. My husband was a jockey for a very long time until he got seriously injured in 2004.

This not my first blog, I created one when I went to a High Schools that Work conference in Atlanta this summer. The speaker had us create one, he told us that he used it to post homework and to communicate with his students.