The assignment (Guided Response Questions 1) shows key concepts in designing rigorous learning goals such as priority standards which are the standards that as a teacher or PLC believe is the most important to teach students so they can be prepared for the next academic year and which standards are to support the priority standards. Standards are set up in chronological order, each one building off the one before it. As an educator, when deciding what standards are priority versus supporting we analyze and categorize a standard’s endurance, meaning if that standard is helpful outside of an academic environment, it’s leverage, meaning that standard can be used in other subjects, and a standard’s readiness, meaning it sets students up for the next grade level. We create lesson plans Flexible and malleable because no class is the same, no student is the same; what works for one, may not work for the other. As teachers we create assignments that can be differentiated per student because some students will already have passed what you’re teaching and some are not and some will be on pace, so you create instruction that can reach all students.
These concepts (priority versus supporting standard, pacing guides, curriculum maps) are guides that help teachers accomplish their goals (preparing students for the next year of school or for their first year of living in the great big world) in a timely fashion. These tools help teachers to not go straight and use weeks covering a certain topic that should take just days. Pacing guides give you a rough estimate of what you should be it on, when. This next line may sound odd but this is the best way to explain how pacing guides work; in the words of Mr. Kevin Fontanella, my AP U.S. History teacher: “we need to kill Lincoln by Christmas”. And we did. We were at the assassination of President Lincoln before Christmas break. He had told us at the beginning of the year what the pace of the class was going to be and almost four years later I remember exactly where I was sitting and the laughs of my peers when he said that, but he was right and we stayed on track, and it benefited us because it give us the time to really hone in on our skills for the AP test at the end of the year. Curriculum maps create a cohesive timeline that makes learning content easiest for students and makes teaching the content flow through the year. Curriculum maps are like a house, you don’t jump from the foundation to the windows you go in order to create a stable house. For example, I wouldn’t teach how Islam spread from the Middle East to Africa or Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe and that impacts that had without first teaching what Islam is and what it represents and how it was formed at the beginning. And after teaching the foundation (how Islam forms), I would add the supports (how it spreads) and then I would build up the walls (why it grew into a massive global religion) and windows (its place in modern society).
