Curriculum alignment and organization

By: Kriza Garcia

Curriculum alignment and organization:

• Steps in designing• Curriculum Alignment

Steps in designing:

Current curriculum theory views the ends sought as desired changes in the behavior of pupils, “behavior” being used in the broad sense to include thinking, feeling, and acting.

A.SELECTION OF OBJECTIVES

B. SELECTION OF CONTENT: Guidelines

Prioritize: select what is basically needed in specific circumstances

Balance: Ensure that the content is properly balanced in terms of time and resources available

Comprehensiveness: It should include all the necessary details needed by a specific learner.

Completeness: It should properly cater for all the three domains.

Sequence: It should be properly sequenced i.e. simple to complex, known to unknown and spiraled.

The learning experience must give students the opportunity to practice the desired behavior.

C. SELECTION OF LEARNING EXPERIENCE

Factors in Selecting Learning ExperiencesValidity: this refers to the relevance of the stated learning experience to the stated goals of the curriculum;

Relevance to life: learning experience must be related to the learner’s real life situations in and out of school;

Variety: learning experiences must cater to the needs of different types of learners by providing different types of experiences;

Suitability: learning experiences must be suitable to the learners present state of learning and characteristics:

D. GRADE PLACEMENT

It is the stage of designing where you should think of what grade level is fit in the curriculum that you’ve made.

E. TIME ALLOTMENT

As curriculum writer, we must determine how long will be the period of our curriculum. This is to ensure properly balanced in terms of time and resources available.

CURRICULUM ALIGNMENT

Curriculum alignment is a process of ensuring congruency among:

The Written CurriculumThe Taught CurriculumThe Tested Curriculum

Purposes of curriculum alignment:

To provide a clear understanding of the standards at each grade level and subject area

To assure instruction at each grade level and subject area is on target

To assure all students have an equitable education based on high standards (national, state and local).

Two forms of curriculum alignment:

Vertical Alignment

Curriculum maps – detailed representations of the abilities and content that must be covered in each course – help our teachers ensure that students in different classes learn the same things. 

For example:

The Math department might decide to do a focus unit on problem analysis in Math 10. Each teacher would make sure their students had a firm understanding of how to interpret written problems before students move on to Math 11. This ensures that students are at the same level and it prevents unnecessary repetition or overlap of concepts.

Horizontal Alignment

Cross-grade alignment is when a certain theme or tool is used in different subjects and courses at the same time.

For example:Students may be studying Greek mythology in English, painting Greek deities in Art class and applying the Pythagorean theorem in Math. Alternatively, students might learn about online databases and use this newfound tool to research presentations for Science and History classes.

TWO TYPES OF CURRICULUM ALIGNMENT

Macro alignment

is large scale and focuses on ensuring that the curriculum, instructional practices, and assessments are all aligned.

Micro alignment Regardless of your curriculum-design framework, your map-unit template most likely includes: what students will know, what students will do, a variety of assessments, and the incorporation of state or other standards. Micro alignment is the alliance of these four elements.

What do we align?

Standards Curriculum Teaching Evaluation

Thank you!

http://www.slideshare.net/Mray29/curric-align121410?qid=45713683-1d0b-421b-92e3-2013a2d9c118&v=&b=&from_search=20https://prezi.com/sqhw_wie2u_m/prof-ed-07-curriculum-designing-alignment-and-organization-summary/

https://www.smus.ca/discover/learning/foundations/alignment

http://www.slideshare.net/Mray29/curric-align12-8-09?next_slideshow=1

https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/alignment.html

http://www.slideshare.net/proyectoama/overview-of-standards-based-curriculum-alignment

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