CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION AS THE VEHICLE

Important:

-What we study is essential to the structure of the discipline.

-What we study provides a roadmap toward expertise in a discipline.

-What we study is essential to building student understanding

-What we study balances knowledge, understanding, and skill.

It is our job as a teacher to decide what is important and what is not.  I suggest that we don't waste any time teaching something that is not worthwhile.  Is our time worthy enough spending time on this particular task?

Focused:

-Whatever we do is unambiguously aligned with the articulated and essential learning goals.

-Whatever we do is designed to get us where we need to go.

-Both the teacher and students know why we're doing what we're doing

-Both the teacher and the students know how parts of their work contribute to a bigger picture of knowledge, understanding, and skill.

Backward design keeps sticking in my mind referring to focused.  We need to have our end goal in mind when we are designing our content.  Where do we want to go? and how are we going to get there? and how are we going to get ALL of our students where they need to be?

Engaging:

-Students most often find meaning in their work.

-Students most often find the work intriguing.

-Students see themselves and their world in their work.

-Students see value to others in the work.

-Students find the work provokes their curiosity.

-Students often find themselves absorbed by the work. 

MIX IT UP! Are we just teaching, or are we teaching our students?  Engagement is ESSENTIAL!  What will our students learn when they are not engaged?  (that should be an easy answer :) )

Demanding:

-The work is most often a bit beyond the reach of each learner.

-Student growth is nonnegotiable.

-Standards for work and behavior are high.

-Students are guided in working and thinking like professionals.

-There is no "loose" time.

How do you feel when you have accomplished a big task?  Does it make you feel good or bad?  I know when I accomplish something hard it makes me feel accomplished, and makes me feel like I am a hard working and valuable individual.  Our students should always feel like they are valuable.

Scaffolded:

-Teacher teaches for success.

-Criteria for success are clear to students.

-Criteria for classroom operation and student behavior are clear to students.

-Varied materials support growth of a range of learners.

-Varied modes of teaching support a variety of learners.

-Varied Avenues to learning support a variety of learners.

-Small and large group instruction focuses on varied learners needs.

-Varied peer support mechanisms are consistently available.

-The teacher uses modeling, organizers, and other strategies to point out success. 

It is our job as a teacher to make sure that each of our students are pushed, and grow to their full potential.  How will we make sure that all of or students make it?  Will we just just leave their journey to chance hoping that they will make it?  Or we will scaffold them and make sure that they make it?

It's not what you teach, 

it's how you teach it.

It's an ultimate goal of a teach to, ensure that students develop the knowledge, understanding, and skill necessary to be fulfilled and productive members of society. -Chapter 5 Fulfilling the promise of the differentiated classroom

With that being said there are 2 types of teachers.  The teachers that teach, and the teachers that teach you.  Both teachers most likely know the content that they are teaching, they both are most likely experts in the subject/subjects that they are teaching, The difference between those two teachers is this: 

One teacher, "The information is here.  I'll deliver it. You get it."  

The other teacher, "I will learn about you and do whatever t takes, using this subject matter, to make sure you are a fuller and more potent human being than you were when you walked in this room.  Please be my colleague in that quest."

Which teacher do you want to be?  I think we all know the answer to that.  This quote explains what this student said the difference was between these two teachers, "The difference was that the first teacher taught algebra.  The second teacher taught me German."  

If we are just teaching to teach, our students are not learning.

I would like to share an experience that I had in high school.  I had a teacher for math my first semester of my junior year.  It seemed to me like I was learning nothing.  The teacher would teach, and students in the back of the class were totally checked out, and were doing other things.  The teacher knew math, and taught math everyday of that semester but that didn't mean that I learned any math.  As the semester changed my math teacher changed as well.  Oddly to my surprise I really started to understand everything in that math class.  It was the way that the teacher taught that changed my understanding.  It was the same math class, and there were two teachers teaching EXACTLY the same content, but one of those teachers was teaching math, and the other was teaching ME math.  Something in that class changed the way that I viewed math.  As I came into my senior year, I had enough math credits that I wasn't required to take math, and as good as that idea sounded I signed up for a college prep math class from the same teacher that I had for my second semester of my junior year.  That year was no different than the semester before.  I learned SO much.  As I began taking college math classes just the next year there was so much that I already knew, and I owe that all to the teacher 

who taught ME math.