Curriculum Action Plan

One area that needs to improve in my curriculum plan is my objectives. So, I plan to write more thoughtful and planned out objectives. It is easy to choose a word such as know or explain and then follow it with a simple statement, then you have an objective. It is also easy to simply make something up quickly without true thought if it is a reasonable objective for the students to achieve and/or if the instructional activities will actually achieve the objective. However, I plan to write better objectives because it is truly an important part of curriculum planning. For one of my classes, US history, it is especially important because of state standards and end of course testing. It is important to write objectives that will truly be utilized in the lesson and will allow the student to be prepared for the end of course test. For my other class, law education, it is also important to write good objectives even though their are no South Carolina state standards for this course. It is important that objective are created for each lesson and followed to make sure students are learning the proper material and are actually getting it. I plan to write better objectives and write them on the board each day so that the students and myself can know the objective and it is there for reference to make sure that we have met our objective.

Another suggestion that I will use to change my lesson plans and instruction is to use a variety of assessments. There are many ways to test students' knowledge and understanding. Typically teachers use quizzes and tests to test students knowledge. In addition to these types of tests, I use think writes, but there are many ways to test students knowledge. So, I plan to use many different assessments. I have planned a photo story, fishbowl exercises, and mock trials. Although these are not typical assessments, they are a great way to test students' knowledge. For each of these activities/assessments student must know a variety of skills and information to do well. For example, in mock trials students not only need to know trial procedure, but also the topic we are studying at that time in order to properly argue their point.

Finally, a suggestion that I will use in my instruction is to divide students by strengths. This suggestion is especially good for my law education classes because they consist of all grades and all abilities. I have already noticed that dividing students by strengths or putting higher performing student with lower performing students makes a big difference. Each student improves their skills and learning. The lower performing student learns material from a peer and the higher performing student improves his/her skills by repeating and explaining their knowledge.