Plan for the Morning

1. PRIJ 3030Teaching and Learning in the Primary and Junior DivisionsWednesday, September 11Session 3:The Ontario Curriculum Plan for the Morning • Please sign in and let’s hear about your practicum, how did Monday/Tuesday go? • What is curriculum? Our curriculum documents • Curriculum Framework, real-life examples *Housekeeping: next week’s excursion, have a look at our new blog,refer to the sign up sheets for the upcoming partner assignment and group assignment, Chapter 5 from our course text book is a great resource for this discussion,

2. Mental Set: Intrapersonal Reflection– According to you, what is curriculum? • Silently, jot down your response. Interpersonal Reflection– • Share with your elbow partner.

3. What is Curriculum? • Curriculum provides us with a framework of what students are to learn. • Curriculum does not tell us how to teach. • Curriculum is a reflection of the current socio-economic and geo-political climate and so it is constantly being revised.

4. What does the Ministry say? • http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/teachers/curriculum.html • What are curriculum documents? • “Curriculum documents define what students are taught in Ontario publicly funded schools. They detail the knowledge and skills that students are expected to develop in each subject at each grade level. By developing and publishing curriculum documents for use by all Ontario teachers, the Ministry of Education sets standards for the entire province.”

5. What is Curriculum?: • The Four Curricula of Schools: Educational theorist Larry Cuban questions the myth that a well-defined curriculum determines what is taught (and learned) in a school. He suggests that there are at least four different curricula in use in our schools. • "The official curriculum is what state and district officials set forth in curricular frameworks and courses of study. They expect teachers to teach it; they assume students will learn it." • The taught curriculum is what teachers, working alone in their rooms, actually choose to teach. "Their choices derive from their knowledge of the subject, their experiences in teaching the content, their affection or dislike for topics, and their attitudes toward the students they face daily." • The learned curriculum. Beyond what test scores reveal about content learning, students also learn many unspecified lessons embedded in the environment of the classroom. Depending on what the teacher models, the student will learn to process information in particular ways and not in others. They will learn when and when not to ask questions and how to act attentive. They may imitate their teacher's attitudes. They learn about respect for others from the teacher's own demonstration of respect or lack thereof. The learned curriculum is much more inclusive than the overtly taught curriculum. • The tested curriculum. "What is tested is a limited part of what is intended by policy makers, taught by teachers, and learned by students." The farther removed teachers are from the actual construction of the tests, the worse the fit between the other curriculums and what is tested. Standardized tests often represent the poorest assessment of the other curriculums.

6. What is Curriculum? “It is not just textbooks, story books and course outlines. The Ministry definition suggests that curriculum consists of everything in the school environment. Children learn from what surrounds them—not just what the teacher points them to. So the curriculum is the text books and the story books and the pictures—and the seating plan and the group work and the posters and the music, the announcements, the prayers and readings, the languages spoken in the school, the food in the cafeteria, the visitors in the classrooms, the reception of parents in the office, the races (or race) of the office staff, the custodial staff, the teachers, the administration, the displays of student work, the school teams and sports played, the clubs, the school logo or emblem, the field trips, the assignments and projects, the facial expressions and body language of everybody, the clothes everybody wears… it goes on and on. I would not for a moment suggest that we can control all of this, but we’d better be aware of it. We can be sure our students are. I have no intention, even if you had the time, of giving strategies of how to cope with everything. I don’t have strategies. But if we don’t start thinking of what the effect of all this environment is on all our students, we’ll never develop the strategies that will work.” Nora Allingham—Extract from a keynote address: “Anti-Racist Education—A Privileged Perspective” given before educators in Toronto BE, January 31, 1992

7. After hearing from… • Larry Cuban and Nora Allingham has your opinion shifted or changed? • Talk within your table groups and then we will share as a whole group

8. The Ontario Curriculum 1. Language (revised 2006) 2. Mathematics (revised 2005) 3. Science and Technology (revised 2007) 4. Social Studies (revised 2013) 5. The Arts (revised 2009) 6. Health and Physical Education (interim ed; revised 2010) The Kindergarten Program (revised 2006) The Full-Day Early Learning – Kindergarten Program (Draft Version 2010-11)

9. Task • Within your table group, read through the front matter, have a look at the Overall Expectations and the Specific Expectations, pay attention to how assessment is referenced • Look at a specific grade and topic • How might you frame the “Big Ideas” or “Overall Expectations” as an essential question? • What do you notice? • Take jot notes and report back to the larger group

10. Essential Questions • Heart of the matter • Interesting, relevant and meaningful to students • Possesses emotive force • Open ended, arguable, multiple perspectives and possible answers • Have no obvious right or simple answers • Clearly stated, concise • Resources are available to the students to use • Require problem solving, decision making and higher order thinking • Are posed within the context of important life questions • Lead to new questions asked by students

11. The Full Day Learning Early Learning document- a case study • Let’s look at how a teacher takes a curriculum, crafts long range plans (in this case a quarter of the year) and then works to implement those plans within a framework of a Kindergarten classroom, look at the handouts at your table and analyse the ways in which this teacher has been intentional

12. A case study • Let’s look at how a Grade 6/7 teacher takes a curriculumand then works to implement those plans within a daily framework • Look at the handouts at your table and analyse the ways in which this teacher has been intentional

13. Samples • Let’s look at more samples of how curriculum drives our planning…. A collection of lesson plans and unit plans.