What Came First...The Chicken or the Egg? The Curriculum or the Methods?

Greetings!

With all that I am learning in Methods, I have been thinking about its relation to Curriculum Planning and the way that these courses are presented at MSMC. As students, we must all take Curriculum Planning first, in order to have a unit plan upon which to base the lessons that we write in Methods. Here's the thing--I learned a lot in Methods which would have directly impacted the way I designed my unit plan. They are so intrinsically linked that I wish they had been taught together, over a 2 semester period. To be completely honest, I didn't really understand curriculum, either during or after I took the course. It seemed very fuzzy and kind of all over the place. We were required to immediately start planning a unit without fully comprehending what one was. How can you plan a unit if you don't have a real curriculum upon which to base it? I'm still asking "What does the curriculum look like for each given subject in a given grade level?" In choosing our topics, many of us were just guessing. This is why I think that MSMC should provide students with a listing of real curriculum and unit topics for each major subject area (Math, ELA, SS, and Sci.) by grade level. This way, I would know if Nouns constitute a unit, a mini unit, or just a lesson or two within a broader unit. And what, exactly, goes in a math unit? I haven't the slightest idea. The kind of listing I recommend would give me this information. And, equally important, it would actually let me see what the curriculum will look like when I begin teaching.

For example, I know at the schools where I sub that you are on a very tight schedule to teach specific lessons within specific time frames. We didn't touch on this at all in Curriculum Planning and, yet, it seems to me that this would be a critical factor in how you design a unit, the number and type of lessons you include, and the time you allot to each, not to mention determining where to best allot the extra time needed for IPM and SIM lessons. I designed my unit as if I had all the time in the world to teach it. I now know differently! I also created 5 anticipatory sets for my unit that I have since learned are more like lessons--they each run about 15-20 minutes!!! Dr. Smirnova would faint if she saw them! (Forgive me, Dr. S, but we were never taught the 3-5 minute rule in Curriculum Planning and I will never do a 15 minute A.S., I promise!).

So, you can see there are valid reasons to combine Curriculum Planning with Methods. Oh, and another is standards. I would love some lessons dedicated to teaching us how to find, understand, and apply standards before starting our unit plan. This is such a critical component of teaching and I received NO instruction on how to do it. Standards are not easy to figure out on one's own--especially since there are so many different sites with differing descriptions and explanations-and now, with the literacy competencies, it's become even more complex. I would love to feel fully confident about identifying the most appropriate standards, but I don't. I just muddle through, the best I can, but I always feel that I am falling short of the mark--and this worries me. Some specific instruction in this area would be a godsend.

There is no question, for me, that it would be extremely helpful to have some understanding of Methods while outlining a unit and creating lesson topics and activities...just as it would be invaluable to be working from real curriculum and unit topics from the local schools. What do you think--am I right on target or completely off base??? Let me know!

Until next time...