Curriculum Project: Sample Curriculum Planning Charts Assignment

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Curriculum Project: Sample Curriculum Planning Charts Project – Elementary or SPED Assignment Instructions

MAT in Elementary or SPED

Consult the Horizontal Mapping Project you have already completed and create daily planning charts to correspond to 3 days of mapping. Submit a legend and 3 days of Curriculum Planning Charts. Each day of curriculum should fit on one page (your submission will be a total of six pages—title page, legend, three charts, and a reference page). Utilize grading feedback from this sample submission to complete the final Curriculum Project. No retroactive credit for the Sample Curriculum Planning Charts Project can be given from submission of the final Curriculum Project.

For this project, you should consider yourself to be a curriculum planner that is providing an overview of what would be involved in a lesson.  As the curriculum planner you are creating the block plan and the classroom teacher would then use your overview to create a very detailed daily lesson plan.

Your curriculum planning charts (block plans) should have:

  • The standard number and standard topic clearly identified (e.g. VA Math 3.1 Place Value)
  • What the teacher and students will do for each lesson
  • The legend symbols to show integration (see description below)

Your curriculum planning charts (block plans) should exhibit:

  • Effective use of allotted time for instruction as well as learning activities
  • Creative, engaging, hands-on, and age-appropriate learning activities and assignments
  • Thorough explanation of learning concepts, activities, and experiences

Your curriculum planning charts (block plans) will include:

  1. Integration of content areas. Show how content areas relate to each other by using a legend. The legend is a “symbol list” of the many parts that should make up the curriculum. A legend helps you easily view where you are making holistic learning experiences for your students. For example:
  • If you are teaching grids and how to plot points in math, you could teach map skills (using longitude and latitude) in Social Science.[M, SS,] The M stands for Math and the SS stands for Social Science and you are integrating the two together.
  • If you are teaching poetry in English / Language Arts class, you could introduce your history lesson with a poem such as “O Captain, My Captain” by Walt Whitman (an homage to Abraham Lincoln after his assassination following the Civil War.) [LA, SS,] The LA stands for Language Arts and the SS stands for Social Science and you are integrating the two together.
  • If you are teaching the water cycle in Science and a “Rain Dance” from the Native American culture in SS, you are integrating 3 subjects. [S, SS, D] The S stands for Science, and the SS stands for Social Science, and the D stands for Dance.
  • If you are teaching how to read and create Historical timelines in Social Science class, you could have your students create a timeline using Power Point. [SS, T] The SS stands for Social Science, and the T stands for Technology.
  1. Integration of content and curriculum components. Make sure to integrate the following content and components:
  • Daily integrate reading and writing instruction for English Language Arts (ELA). Use classic and award-winning literature.  Note what skill you are teaching by using the literature.
  • Daily integrate Fine Arts (Visual Art, Music, Theatre, or Dance); Health (e.g. You could teach about cell growth in math class, etc.); and PE (eg. You could teach a dance popular in the Civil War era.)
  • Highlight in yellow (as seen in the example) how you are frequently providing diverse instruction and accommodations for exceptional learners.
  • Promote critical thinking and use problem solving activities.
  • Provide active learning experiences. Plan multiple hands-on learning experiences and projects. Paper and pencil worksheets should be used very sparingly.
  • Leverage technology. Teachers and students should use various apps to design and complete projects and reinforce learning.
  • Use a variety of informal and formal assessments (paper /pencil, projects, reports, portfolios, etc.)
  • Collaborate with colleagues, families, and communities (consider team-teaching and using other faculty members to help form smaller groups in the classroom, using families to help with classroom experiences or field trips, using community guest speakers and area resources and field trip opportunities).
  • Use diverse resources (books, apps, websites, and journal articles). If you use an app or website, paste the web address within the block plan. However, you will formally cite the resource as a reference in current APA format at the end of the project in the reference section.