synopsis

SYNOPSIS

Mary Giacomarro & Joel V. Thornton

Council of Curriculum Development

Proposed Curriculum Change

The council of curriculum development is a group of administrators and teachers working together to promote success. The council’s responsibility is to review current curriculums and locate areas of improvement that should be made to promote student achievement. This year the council focused on the improvement plan to “UNLEARN” the passive learner in the mathematics classroom. It will also focus on one of the Five Theories of Learning, which is the experimentalist theory. Here students learn “by” doing or hands-on.

The first step of the council was to develop a three-stage learning curve that included the following: CONCRETE à ICONIC à SYMBOLIC. We identified these three characteristics based on the current curriculum. The current curriculum in place, teaches our students from the CONCRETE to SYMBOLIC stage. This means that our students are only memorizing the material. They truly never learn or understand the material to apply that knowledge to higher-order-thinking problems. The proposed curriculum will teach from the CONCRETE to ICONIC then SYMBOLIC. Through this sequence, students learn to make the connection and understand why they are solving the problem. With the connection, students are able to apply their knowledge and solve higher-order-thinking problems or real-life problems.

The proposed curriculum will also focus on three aspects: “UNLEARN” traditional assessment methods, improve technology and promote success for the 21^st Century learner. The proposed curriculum will have teachers grading their students through projects, presentations, tests, quizzes, homework, research papers and bi-weekly blogs where students solve real-life problems and respond to team members. Teachers will also have a classroom set of graphing calculators that are connected to a computer that projectors their answers and individual screen. Here the teacher has a virtual classroom where everyone is interactive. Smart boards will be provided in each classroom with projectors and a mobile cart of laptops provided with mathematics features. The 21^st Century learner must be able to adapt and reason. The world is forever changing and the successful student will be prepared for the rigorous road ahead. I would like to end with a quote by Nelson Mandela “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”