2 posts from January 2009

            I am the only MS Studies teacher at Murrah. I have never had any sort of meeting with the rest of the 9^th grade teachers about curriculum (horizontal). The Social Studies department meets every now and then but we never discuss what is being taught in other classes (vertical).

            I think district based curriculum is appropriate, but it should be reviewed, at least within each department and grade level at the beginning/middle of the year. At the same time I think teachers should have the freedom to create their own pacing guides; this should be done at the beginning of the year along with the other teachers in the grade level. This way teachers can collaborate on what they are teaching at the beginning of the year, and possibly team teach certain things. 

            To account for vertical planning I think each class should have a standardized test at the end of the year (this could be made by the teacher). These tests and scores should be reviewed by the whole department to account for what has been taught and learned during the year.

            Making a curriculum map for summer school should not be difficult as both me and Patrick have taught MS studies. The problems I foresee us having to deal with are cramming everything we need to teach into one summer and how the first years will handle teaching the material when we leave. To compensate for this I think we should be as specific as possible when creating our map.

            This site references a number of articles, which I referred to for curriculum mapping ideas. http://www.curriculummapping101.com/Curriculum_Mapping.html

Luckily it seems my kids have changed quite a bit. In the first week and a half my classes have been mostly amazing. I think this is because of a combination of changes I have made and the maturation of 9th graders.