Planning, Teaching, And Evaluating A Semester Or A Year-Long Curriculum:
Designing Instruction On Ecosystems

This is one of your main teaching activities. To do this well, you must be proficient with the following knowledge elements concerning well-designed curricula, well-designed instruction, developing and delivering instruction from textbooks and from programs. Look at Part III, 3., Planning, teaching, and evaluating a semester or a year-long curriculum here.

Using a variety of online documents, we will address the following elements that go into planning, teaching, and evaluating a semester or a year-long curriculum.
Glossary

Principles of Well-designed Curriculum

1. What is a curriculum?

2. Some curricula teach tool skills (reading, math, language, and reasoning). Other curricula teach content or subject matter knowledge systems (literature, history). Use explicit instruction with tool skills (reading, math, science, foreign language) and with essential knowledge (e.g., concepts) in loosely-coupled knowledge systems (literature, history).

3. Develop a curriculum by considering:
a. What does your state curriculum, district curriculum, scientific research, subject matter experts, and your own expertise say your students should learn (curriculum objectives, or standards)?
b. Curriculum strands---what main kinds of knowledge are to be taught; e.g., in literature, poems, plays, religious writing, and fiction of different periods. What strand are you working on here?

d. Curriculum standards, goals, or objectives---and the knowledge students need to achieve the objectives---for (1) the whole curriculum, (2) units (sequences of lessons) in the curriculum, (3) lessons, and (4) short tasks in each lesson. Which of these four are you working on? Answer: A UNIT on ecosystems as part of the science strand. Take a look. Please go to “c,” below.

c. The sample of knowledge to be taught in each strand---relevant to the objectives.

d. Using knowledge analysis to identify all the elementary (component) skills in a complex skill.

e. Teaching component skills or knowledge elements (pre-skills) before teaching complex skills that integrate knowledge elements---logically progressive sequence). So, in what sequence will you work on the objectives?

f. What textbook, internet, and other materials you and your students will need to meet the objectives.

g. How will knowledge elements be integrated into larger and coherent wholes.
(1) WITHIN a strand or subject. In an arithmetic curriculum, you would integrate counting,
subtraction, and estimation to form the routine of long division. Add such integrated knowledge
to your set of objectives.
(2) Across strands or subjects. For example, what knowledge from reading, math, and common
knowledge strands could you integrate with other science materials when you teach the unit on
ecology?

So, let’s say that you used the above principles to develop a CURRICULUM MAP for your grade level.

Curriculum Map of what knowledge to be taught in lessons, and the sequence (top to bottom) in which the knowledge will be taught.

8:00-8:30
Lesson / 8:40-9:20
Lesson / 9:30-10 / 10:05-10:40
Lesson / 10:45-11:15
Lesson / 11:15-11:45
Lesson / 11:50-12:30 / 12:40-1:20
Lesson / 1:25-2:00
Lesson / 2:05-2:30
Lesson
Common Knowledge and Language
Speaking in full sentences with proper grammar.
Names of persons and places.
Colors, shapes, prepositions.
Days of the week; times of day; months; seasons.
Materials (wood, stone, paper, etc.) and qualities (hard, / Reading 1
Saying words fast (blending sounds) and saying words slowly (segmenting).
Letter-sound correspondences(sounds that go with letters).
Sounding out words and saying them fast.
Story comprehension (retelling) and vocabulary.
Reading sentences and longer text.
Comprehension / Snack
Rules and routines for setting table, passing food, cleaning up. / Science
Plants:
Kinds
Life
cycle
Ecosystems
Astronomy:
Solar systems:
sun, planets, orbits, moons.
Galaxies
Light years
Galaxies / Math
Rote counting
(“one, two, three…”)
Rational counting.
“One, two, three blocks.”
Group counting. “Three red blocks and 2 blue blocks.”
Addition
Subtraction
Multiplica-tion. / Reading 2
Continue from Reading 1. / Lunch
Rules and routines for setting table, passing food, cleaning up. / Story
Vocabulary
Retell and predict, using proper grammar and syntax. / Applications/
Integration
Teach
Real-world activities to generalize and apply knowledge:
Find shapes, colors
Draw stories
Garden
Make mobiles of solar system
Invent ecosystem / Daily Review
Note weak knowledge to firm or reteach now and to review the next day.

Here’s another way to display the curriculum: a scope and sequence chart. It shows (1) strands (main subjects) and substrands; and (2) when instruction on each strand starts and stops. Draw a vertical line through a lesson and you see everything worked on that lesson. Notice how knowledge elements (e.g., letter-sound correspondence) are taught before more complex skills that CONTAIN the elements (sounding out words).

Lessons/Days
1 10 15 20 25 30 40 ….. 60……90……120…….

Strands

Common
knowledge
and language
Full sentences ______
Grammar ______
Names ______
Colors ______
Shapes ______
Prepositions ______
Days/time
Days and Weeks______
Clock time ______

Reading
Blending ______
Segmenting ______
Letter-sound ______
Sounding out ______
Vocabulary ______
[goes with
language
strand]
Comprehension ___[hear story]______[read story]______
Sentences and
longer text ______

Science
Plants ______
Ecosystems ______
Astronomy ______

Math
Rote counting ______
Rational counting ______
Group counting ______
Addition ______
Subtraction ______
Multiplication ______
Story ______

Applications/
integration ______

Principles of Well-designed Instruction

1. When and how will you use (1) explicit, systematic, focused, teacher-directed instruction; and (2) discussion, inquiry, and independent student learning and application.

2. How will you collect information from student performance (assessment), and use it to make decisions about curriculum and instruction.

3. What is the proper for procedure or format for teaching the different kinds of knowledge: facts, concepts, rules, routines?

4. How and when (tasks in lessons) will you work systematically on all five phases of learning: (a) acquisition of new knowledge; (b) generalization of knowledge to new examples and materials; (c) fluent use of knowledge; (d) retention of knowledge; (5) strategic integration of knowledge elements into larger wholes?

5. How and when will you corrects errors, firm up weak knowledge elements, reteach as needed, and provide intensive instruction as needed?

6. What is the design of lessons. Sequence of Tasks; each task does what: review and firm or reteach--retention; acquisition; generalization, fluency building; expand (more of the same); integration?

7. How will you teach at a brisk pace.

8. How and when will you give frequent opportunities for group (choral) and individual responses to test/check learning?

9. How and when will you use pre-corrections, or reminders, to prevent errors.

10. How and when will you use a questioning technique such as Socratic dialogue.

11. Prepare outlines or guided notes, with hyperlinks.

Focus all of the above on Ecosystems---a UNIT on the science strand. [Go back.]

Objectives. Students will.

1. Invent an ecosystem.

2. Identify threats to desert, rainforest, and marsh ecosystems. Use diagram (#3 above) to make another diagram (with rules statements) tracing the destruction of an ecosystem as a result of damage to one or more of its components.

3. Correctly identify examples and nonexamples of ecosystems, and deserts, rainforests, and marshes.

4. Diagram a model of desert, rainforest, and marsh ecosystems, showing all components and their interrelationship, and stating rules that describe the interconnections. E.g., X does N to Y.

5. Define concepts: system, ecosystem, desert, rainforest, marsh using verbal definitions, and……

We’ll use the document below to plan instruction on ecosystems.

Planning Instruction on Ecosystems as Part of the Science Strand

Objectives. Arrange the objectives into a logical sequence. Ask, “What sequence teaches pre-skills first, or tells a story, or leads to a big picture or an application that integrates all the other objectives?” / What NEW knowledge regarding ecosystems is needed to meet these objectives? Identify the form of knowledge of each—concept, fact, rule, routine. This tells you how to teach. / What PRE-SKILL knowledge elements are needed from science and other subjects to acquire new knowledge? Identify the form of knowledge of each—concept, fact, rule, routine. This tells you how to teach. / Acquisition set of examples and nonexamples? / Outline the instructional procedure during acquisition.
Suggest how you will work on generalization, fluency, retention, and integration (examples and method). Go here, please.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Outline the instructional procedure.

Lesson 1 Script the instructional procedure during acquisition. Suggest how you will work on generalization, fluency, retention, and integration (examples and method). / Lesson 2 Script the instructional procedure during acquisition. Suggest how you will work on generalization, fluency, retention, and integration (examples and method).
Task 1 / Task 1
Task 2 / Task 2
Task 3 / Task 3
Task 4 / Task 4
Task 5 / Task 5
Task 6 / Task 6
Lesson 3 Script the instructional procedure during acquisition. Suggest how you will work on generalization, fluency, retention, and integration (examples and method). / Lesson 4 Script the instructional procedure during acquisition. Suggest how you will work on generalization, fluency, retention, and integration (examples and method).
Task 1 / Task 1
Task 2 / Task 2
Task 3 / Task 3
Task 4 / Task 4
Task 5 / Task 5
Task 6 / Task 6
Lesson 5 Script the instructional procedure during acquisition. Suggest how you will work on generalization, fluency, retention, and integration (examples and method). / Lesson 6 Script the instructional procedure during acquisition. Suggest how you will work on generalization, fluency, retention, and integration (examples and method).
Task 1 / Task 1
Task 2 / Task 2
Task 3 / Task 3
Task 4 / Task 4
Task 5 / Task 5
Task 6 / Task 6

Make guided notes for students, that provide the same outline, plus some content (e.g., definitions) or hyperlinks to glossary and other docs.