Curriculum Mapping - Concept mapping

Many school systems are involved in "curriculum mapping:. Quoting Heidi Hayes Jacobs, the guru of curriculum mapping and president of Curriculum Designers, Inc:

Curriculum mapping is a procedure for collecting and documenting the operational curriculum anchored in the actual school calendar. Each teacher in the building enters critical information about the basic elements of the operational curriculum—that is: what has actually been addressed via content, skills, and assessment.

I've seen schools and talked to teachers who found the curriculum mapping exercise, when they review what the students are learning in the previous years and what they are expected to know before going to the next year, to be a very fun and productive exercise. BTW - any time that you get teachers EXCITED about doing something that is related to administration and curriculum, it's really special! I think it's partially that they get to think holistically about their students' education, it's partially that they have a very focused way to discuss curriculum with their colleagues.

BUT, in all my experiences working curriculum, the problem of the underlying "language" remains. Are we talking about performance standards, learning outcomes, or benchmarks? Are we using our state standards as "primitive"? I for one, have found the state standards to often be confusing to work with.

I saw an interesting different approach this week. A company started looking at the high stake tests (FCAT and AP exams). They studied how children did on the practice tests. The results were then mapped back to mathematical concepts. A single question on a test could map back to several math concepts.

They build a database for each student of the right/wrong answers and which math concepts they map to. Then, for intervention, they build a list of the concepts which would be most useful in improving performance and teach. They start teaching on the concepts that would have the most impact on test results.

I'm now looking at the third grade math curriculum trying to figure out how I would map some little part of it, just getting my feet wet.



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News Stories to Study History with

I read an article on a homeschool curricula blog and I'm intrigued. It takes a news story and discusses using it as a lesson play to teach with. I'm going to pick up on this and hopefully, build an entire website and educational effort around it. Anybody think this would be interesting? Of course, it's probably much more useful to homeschoolers than their standards-leadened school bound counterparts.

News story from earlier this week: Kosovo Breaks Away: Province declares itself sovereign; Serbia says it's illegal. Kosovo's regional parliament declared independence Sunday

Questions for discussion and research:

Has anything like this ever happened in American history? Two likely answers, the American Revolution and the Civil War.

The American Revolution was punctuated by a Declaration of Independence. Did Kosova issue a declaration of independence? If so, how did they justify their actions? In fact, lets revisit the US Declaration - What was it's purpose? How did we justify our acts? When the Confederacy declared it's independence, did it issue a declaration? What justification did it give?

Who in Kosova declared independence in terms of what organization? What claim do they have to speak for Kosova? In America, what organization did we have that declared independence and what claim did it have to speak for the colonies? And what organization was there in the Confederacy?

What do we think the Serbs will do? What did the British do when the US declared independence? What did the Union do when the Confederates declared independence? What will decide whether this will be called a War of Independence or a Civil War?

When Kosova declared independence, the US recognized them as a nation. Any idea why? The US recognition, is it important? Did anyone recognize the US as a nation after our July 1776 declaration? Why did they? How much and how did they help us (Answer; France recognized us and sent $s, generals, soldiers and support. Mostly to hurt their rival the UK). Did anybody recognize the South?

Anybody want to talk or research other efforts for independence? Anybody want to talk about the Kurds in Iraq? The Mexican war of independents? How about the Declaration of Independence by Texas (from Mexico).

This post brought to you by: online kids learning, where you get website info on reading comprehension, and math help, for home school.



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Learning State Capitals

I watched my daughter try to memorize all the states capitals last night and this morning for a test today. I remain annoyed at these efforts. Very stressful, time-consuming, and of unclear benefit to me. While it's fun to be able to rattle off (Maine-Augusta: Maryland-Annapolis) the names, I'm not convinced that it's worth the time and effort. While name recognition is pleasant, I feel that it's a hollow exercise. But it's an effort made by most schools and most students. When I was small, my brothers and Dad used to take great pleasure in learning them and firing them back and forth over breakfast (including mottos: The ShowMe State?)

Teach to the Test - FCAT

This year, my daughter has teachers who have thrown out all pretense of teaching anything other than FCAT.Last night at her school’s open house, I sat, stunned, as her English teacher explained that there would be no curriculum other than FCAT practice until after the writing test in February... “I don’t teach any literature at all until after that time,” the English teacher said. “I’m sure you all understand.”

I don’t understand. Not at all. I’m speechless. by Vicki McCash Brennan

Ms. Brennan - You are so right to be outraged.

How can America, whose future depends so much on education, have turned our educational system into this test prep morass? It's a grim frivolous time in education where the need for reform has been hijacked by a top-down order to focus on the simplest most-measurable type of education and get the largest number of kids possible to score at the passing level.

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