Designing an effective curriculum based upon appropriate learning goals and objectives is important
to me because determining goals and objectives based upon student needs and abilities, rather than textbook goals, gives students
a higher rate of confidence that leads to a higher rate of achievement.
I have a better understanding of how to design an academic curriculum effectively because
I understand the different entities of curriculum (enacted, formal, social, academic, etc...) and their relationships
to students' academic life. I know that I must include certain classroom rituals to create a feeling of structure and
stability and maintain an environment of mutual respect and openess. I have examined the values that high school students
place on different aspects of their lives that can assist me in making more effective instruction. I also examined the
uniqueness of the enacted curriculum of the Marine Corps culture and War Zone Deployments my students experienced and illustrated
techniques I used to incorporate these experiences to reach my students.
I located the behavior management plans for my state, my district and my school to get an idea of
the formal curriculum that directly effects my students and to prepare to handle behavioral situations.
I read Chapters 2, 4, 7 and 10 in "Classroom Management, Perspectives on the Social Curriculum"
(Powell, Richard R., H. James McLaughlin, Tom V. Savage and Stanley Zehm; 2001) and have written at least 2 research reports
listed below. I discussed various issues related to effective curriculum design with five classmates by reading
and responding to their reports as well as discussing my report.
I read the article " Teaching the Social Curriculum: School Discipline as Instruction" to get a more updated idea of what life
is like in 2007's high school social environment (our book was published in 2001). http://www.unl.edu/srs/pdfs/tchgsocc.pdf
I also
read "Age Related Factors in Second Language Acquisition" by Charles William Twyford (from the COMSIS Corporation) to
gain a sense of what obstacles my older students face in successful academic and social engagement.
http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/pubs/classics/focus/02bage.htm
I reasearched
examples of social curriculum published on the web to serve as a model that I could use and found a site from the New Garden
Friends School in Greensboro, North Carolina. http://www.ngfs.org/socialcurr.htm
