By Connie White
In my role as the director of learning design and innovation, I work with teams of teachers, department chairs, and administrators to align and strengthen our curriculum K-12. Robert Marzano and many other curriculum experts talk about the importance of a viable, coherent curriculum and the formidable correlation between a strong curriculum and student achievement.
In Mike Schmoker’s book Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning 2nd Edition (2018), he makes an argument that I strongly support. “What is truly “essential” for schools? The evidence points hard to three fundamental elements: reasonably coherent curriculum (what we teach); soundly structured lessons (how we teach); and large amounts of purposeful reading and writing in every discipline (authentic literacy – integral to both what and how we teach).” In this article, I hope to share a few of my thoughts regarding essential components of a reasonably coherent curriculum. In subsequent articles, I plan to highlight soundly structured lessons and authentic literacy elements.
Many times schools will try to include too many standards or learning targets in each of their courses. This leads to surface “coverage” which does not allow the needed opportunities for adequate intellectual depth. Selecting the most essential standards from state and national standards documents is a first step. Reducing the number of standards will increase learning and retention because students will then have more time to discuss, solve problems, and develop critical thinking skills. Opportunities for students to engage in activities such as evaluating, forming their own conclusions, debating or defending their perspective, and reconcile their learnings with others develops deeper thinkers.
We also need to balance content knowledge with skills. Background knowledge enhances reading ability and promotes reasoning and critical thinking skills. Students must acquire a sufficient vocabulary and background knowledge in order to understand ideas in textbooks, newspapers, and magazines. Otherwise, students become frustrated and are unable to critically evaluate and comprehend their readings. Essential content involves what we want students to know and understand. Skills are what we want students to be able to do. The higher-level skills that teachers aspire for their students are optimally achieved when the background knowledge has been developed.
Finally, we should provide a set of cross-curricular literacy strategies that include purposeful reading, writing, speaking and listening in all of our courses. This should include selected quality readings from textbooks/novels driven by an interesting question, complex essays, research papers, and presentations. Students who have not had a strong exposure to these literacy strategies will often struggle in college.
Intentional curriculum development will thoughtfully embed contemporary literacies such as digital, media, and global skills throughout the K-12 experience but a viable, coherent curriculum that has a balance of content and skills as well as a set of cross-curricular literacy strategies in all courses will most effectively prepare our students for the future.
Reference:
Schmoker, Michael J. Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning. ASCD, 2018.
Connie White is Director of Learning Design & Innovation at Woodward Academy. Woodward offers pre-K to 12th grade college prep programming at Main Campus in College Park and pre-K to 6th grade programming at Woodward North in Johns Creek. Connie speaks nationally and internationally and was recently presented with ISTE’s 2016 ISEN Outstanding Educator Award.
