Designing a Contextually Based Curriculum

Designing a Contextually Based Curriculum
Order Instructions:
Designing a Contextually Based Curriculum
This paper builds off of previous papers.

You will develop a curriculum concept map for the proposed curriculum, one which you can use in your current workplace, as a way to transfer knowledge to another class, or as part of a portfolio for a job assignment.

The following resources may help you with completion of this assignment:
• K-12 Curriculum and Instruction / NC Standard Course of Study
• Curriculum Maps and Unit Plan< • Content Standards and Assessment – Edutopia
• Common Core State Standards Initiative
• Understanding by design by Wiggins and McTighe
• Stirring the head, heart and soul by H. Lynn Erickson
• Concept Based Curriculum and Instruction for the thinking classroom by H. Lynn Erickson
Note: You may also want to check with your learning or workplace environment to identify curriculum standards being used.
Write a six to eight (6-8) page paper in which you:
1. Identify the current North Carolina standards that would impact your proposed design and analyze how you will integrate these standards in your conceptual content-based curriculum design.
2. Create a curriculum concept map which integrates interdisciplinary units, ensures coherence, and includes the various components for improving the learning competences in the organization upon which you have chosen to focus. Provide a rationale for your particular design.
3. Develop a sequence of improvements by locating at least two (2) scholarly articles from either the Library database or the supplemental materials provided. The chosen documents must be: 1) world related, 2) concept related, and 3) inquiry related. Provide a rationale for your sequence of improvements.
4. Choose a set of North Carolina standards for your proposed curriculum. Provide at least three (3) examples of how the chosen standards would affect your curriculum.
5. Recommend at least three (3) instructional strategies and at least three (3) assessments measurements for evaluation. Use at least seven (7) scholarly resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and other Websites that can be edited by the public do not qualify as scholarly resources.
Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:
• Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA format.
I am designing a 21st century curriculum for 1st grade science on habitats. The 3 essential questions that I am focusing on are the following: why are there different habitats? Why do animals need to survive? Lastly, what body parts help them to survive in their habitat? I am integrating interdisciplinary units into the proposed curriculum in the following ways: Language Arts, Social Studies, Art, Technology.
For the language arts piece, students will be conducting research on animal of their choice. They will write a report on the animal’s habitat, its predators and prey and its adaptation to its environment. They will state special body parts that help the animal survive and the animal’s diet. They must also tell why or why not the animal could live in another habitat.

For the social studies element of the curriculum, students will be assigned to teams to research a continent. They will create a powerpoint presentation to demonstrate their knowledge of habitats within a continent. How does the environment help plants and animals survive? What are at least 2 events happening on that continent that endanger plants and animals? What would they do to solve the problem?

For the art aspect of the curriculum, students will be given the choice to create habitat diorama or poster that demonstrates their knowledge of the needs of the plants and animals in the habitat.

I will use a multitude of approaches to assess the outcomes of the curriculum:
Rubrics (students are responsible for their learning; they know what they must do to earn desirable grades; this will be used to grade projects, group work, written work, etc.)
Student opinion survey (students reflect on their learning)
Portfolios (snapshot on learning progression)
Teacher made tests (did students master the standards taught)