Curriculum & Instruction

Matthew Lynch published in Curriculum & Instruction May 6, 2023

Schools-within-Schools: Everything You Need to Know

This is a practice-based research that suggests students who receive individualized and focused instruction perform better in class. The ‘schools-within-a-school’ model establishes a smaller educational unit within the school that has its separate educational program, budget, and staff and students. This model can be called a mode of downsizing where large schools are divided into sub-units or sub-schools to deliver a personalized learning environment that contributes to improved student achievement and a sense of overall well-being.

Once, several schools were built based on the assumption that “bigger is better.” However, subsequent research suggested how ‘schools-within-schools’ can better support and help develop student potential through a uniquely collaborative, child-centered teaching and learning environment. As a result, educators have been increasingly looking to implement the model.

A school-within-a-school is an autonomous and separate entity that’s officially authorized by the superintendent and/or board of education. Such a school must discuss the use of common spaces, such as the auditorium, gym, playground, etc., with a host school. Additionally, it must defer to the building principal on building operation and safety issues. However, rather than being responsible to the building principal, schools-within-schools report to a district official.

Large schools have executed diverse programs to downsize and create smaller schools-within-schools. Some of these smaller schools are structured around themes, such as media and arts, business, science and technology, and international studies, among others, that let students choose one depending on their interests. Mini-schools, house plans, charters, clusters, and learning communities are other approaches to building schools-within-schools. Each of these approaches varies from the others on a range of factors, including the level of autonomy it’ll receive to manage its own education program and how separate the sub-unit will be from the larger institution. Different models of schools-within-schools also vary in their organizational structure and practice and the programs they plan to implement. For instance, some schools-within-schools may simply assemble students while maintaining an administrative and symbolic identification with the larger school.

Since the schools-within-schools model replicates a small school more closely than other types of downsizing, it’s most likely to generate the positive effects of small-scale educational organization. Such schools are also found to have the greatest levels of autonomy and distinctiveness. However, for this model to become successful, complete commitment to implementing the program fully is essential, along with facilitating complete administrative separation of the sub-school to form a separate identity. Staff and student support are equally important to reap several benefits of this model.

Matthew Lynch published in Curriculum & Instruction May 2, 2023

Electives: Tips for Students

These courses are chosen by students based on their interests. Elective classes are additional classes that might count students’ degrees but might not be directly related to their degree programs. There’re three different types of electives students can take in college. These include:

General education electives: General education requirements generally include a portion of elective credits, in which students can choose how they’d like to meet a specific requirement.

Free electives: These electives have no obvious relation to students’ minor, major, or a particular general education requirement. Instead, these are designed for students who want to graduate with a well-rounded education and meet general credit requirements.

Area of study electives: Most majors and minors require a specific number of elective credits. These fall under students’ programs but aren’t specific requirements for completing the degrees. For instance, a bachelor’s in psychology might offer elective choices like the psychology of science fiction and the psychology of corporate culture. Students can also use these electives to take classes to get prepared for certain career paths.

Students may consider the following tips when choosing electives in college.

· Students should balance courses depending on topic and difficulty level when creating their class schedule. They should prioritize general education requirements before filling up the schedule with electives. As the majority of students need to take the same general education classes, they can be more difficult to get into during the first few years.

· For undecided students, electives may be a tool for discovering potential majors while completing their general education requirements. Introductory courses often serve as electives and can give an overview of the subject. Students with varied interests may take 101 classes in subjects such as journalism, statistics, psychology, finance, and geology as exploratory electives.

· Students may consult an academic advisor to identify the best electives for their specific educational journey and career goals. An advisor may also help them find courses to improve their weaker academic areas. For instance, a business major may wish to take a writing elective to learn how to communicate business ideas and craft proposals.

· Students should consider their class format because it can impact their workload, schedule, and experience. They should consider whether the elective is a seminar or a lecture, which will impact their interaction with professors and fellow classmates and the participation expectations. If an elective is a laboratory class, that may mean an additional class each week for lab work.

Matthew Lynch published in Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers April 22, 2023

Lesson Plan: Everything You Need to Know

This refers to a plan that depicts how a lesson is to be organized, presented and specifies the conditions for its success. Before teachers plan their lessons, they’ll need to classify the learning objectives for the class. Next, they should design suitable learning activities and develop strategies to get feedback on student learning.

A lesson plan becomes successful when it integrates and addresses the following three key elements:

· Goals for student learning

· Learning/teaching activities

· Strategies to evaluate student understanding

By specifying concrete goals for student learning, teachers can decide the types of teaching and learning activities they’ll use in class. Additionally, such activities will define how they’ll evaluate whether the desired and planned learning objectives have been achieved.

Teachers preparing their first lesson plans can follow this 6-step method:

1. Outline learning objectives: This is the first step where teachers need to determine what they want their students to learn and do at the end of class. Once the learning goals are outlined, they should be ranked according to their importance. This will help teachers manage their class time and achieve the more important learning objectives if they’re pressed for time.

2. Design a creative introduction: This will stimulate students’ interest and encourage them to think. It’ll also help teachers determine students’ knowledge of the subject, or probably, their preconceived ideas about it. Teachers can use diverse approaches when planning their introduction, including a real-world example, personal anecdote, probing question, etc.

3. Plan the lesson’s main body: This involves planning specific activities and examples (visuals, analogies, etc.) to explain the material and engage students by appealing to diverse learning styles. Teachers should also estimate the time they’ll spend on each example and activity while having a buffer for extended explanation or discussion.

4. Evaluate understanding: This requires devising strategies and using tools and techniques to check what students are learning, if they’re following the lessons, and if the planned learning goals are achieved.

5. Using a conclusion and a preview: Teachers should conclude the lesson by summarizing the main points themselves or asking their students to do it orally or in writing. They should also preview the next lesson to encourage students’ interest and help them link the diverse ideas to a larger context.

6. Set up a realistic timeline to cover the key pointers: This is vital as it shows the teachers’ readiness and flexibility to adapt to the specific classroom environment.

Matthew Lynch published in Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers April 19, 2023

Focused Observation: Everything You Need to Know

This is an observation that takes place with a specified objective, and the observer is present throughout and is a part of the process. During the early years, a practitioner can use focused observation to study a particular child or group of children in a specific area of learning. Such observations can help practitioners make informed assessments and collect evidence of particular skills to track learning/development and decide a plan for the next steps.

Intentional teaching starts with focused observations and methodical documentation of children’s learning and development. With focused observation, practitioners can get to know every child well, track their progress, and chart an individualized curriculum. They can use different tools and techniques to strengthen their observations, build portfolios with rich documentation, and offer adequate support to every child.

Each setting for which focused observation is carried out will use the 3-step process of ‘observe, evaluate, and plan’ to make sure of every child’s ongoing development. While some practitioners choose specific methods for undertaking observations and assessments, others may simply evaluate if their chosen style of the setting is sufficient in documenting learning and supporting continuous development.

Some commonly used methods of focused observation during a child’s early years are:

· Long Observations/Narrative: Such observations typically last for twenty to thirty minutes. They will generally be written in a format that lets practitioners link them quickly to the prime and specific learning areas. When making longer observations, practitioners need to focus on what they would like to monitor and if it’s a particular behavior or skill during a certain time of the day. As these observations are lengthy, they are conducted less frequently. This makes it crucial for the practitioners to have a clear goal for what they would like to accomplish from the observation.

· Shorter Observations: Sometimes, such spontaneous observations are just a few sentences long. Practitioners conduct them frequently and use their knowledge of particular children to identify their actions and skills that are worthy of recognition.

· Learning Stories: Compared to narrative observations, they are longer. They are conducted for an extended period to create a fuller image of the children, their interests, and their enduring aptitude to develop and thrive.

· Artworks: From mathematics to mark-making, a solitary piece of artwork made by a child can have links to several EYFS areas within both the specific and prime areas of learning. Such observations help practitioners make evidence-based and informed assessments.

Matthew Lynch published in Curriculum & Instruction April 17, 2023

Extracurricular Activities: Everything You Need to Know

These are clubs and activities that are school-sponsored but take place outside of the classroom and curriculum. Such activities can include sports, music, community service, student government, arts, educational clubs, hobbies, part-time employment, internships, etc.

For students, it could often be tricky to decide if an activity can be counted as extracurricular or not. Any activity that primarily contributes value to other people or helps students display a talent will make the cut. This means hair braiding for fun won’t be counted as an extracurricular activity as it’s pretty self-centered and doesn’t add value to the lives of others. However, running a YouTube channel to create awareness about student health will be considered an extracurricular activity.

It’s important to note that all hobbies aren’t extracurricular activities. For example, playing video games or watching movies won’t qualify. In other words, recreational activities that an individual indulges in for his own enjoyment won’t make the cut because extracurricular activities need to have some concerted effort and contribute to the individual’s personal development. This means starting an after-school movie club where students watch educational movies and then analyze them could be listed as an extracurricular activity.

Students can benefit a lot from extracurricular activities. For one, such activities can instill useful personality traits and key skills that help them in other walks of life. For instance, sports help develop leadership, teamwork, and problem-solving skills. Playing a musical instrument requires hand-eye coordination, perseverance, and creativity, all of which can lead to positive long-term effects in the student’s life.

Several extracurricular activities require solid memory, problem-solving skills, effective time management, critical thinking, and creativity. As students develop these skills, their academic performance will also benefit, which has been backed by research.

Since such activities help students expand their interests, widen their social circle (by meeting new people and making friends), and become more confident while communicating in groups, they develop good self-esteem and broader social skills. These are crucial for their positive mental health and overall well-being.

High school students participating in diverse extracurricular activities will have the edge over their peers when sending their college applications. That’s because college admissions officers prefer having students who participate in extracurricular activities that display their specialized interests. Instead of choosing a class of homogeneously well-rounded students, colleges these days seek to select a diverse set of students with varied interests and inquisitiveness to learn beyond the traditional classroom.

Matthew Lynch published in Curriculum, Curriculum & Instruction April 11, 2023

Curriculum: Everything You Need to Know

This is a program that specifies how a school or district is expected to achieve the educational objectives for each course. This is organized into subjects that involve specialized learning areas. Every curriculum has one shared goal of helping students to learn. However, a curriculum does much more than guide lessons in different subjects. A curriculum can benefit everyone: students, teachers, and schools.

The top benefits of a curriculum include the following:

· Different nations have different expectations of their students, even if the teaching practices are similar. On a broad level, a curriculum can reflect the national culture in which an institution operates. It can also define and reflect the culture at the school level, from the topics where a school wants to differentiate itself to the particular needs of the neighborhood it serves.

· Revisiting a curriculum regularly allows the educators to monitor how things are going and make room for new and relevant topics. According to the World Economic Forum, the curriculum is a key player in helping teachers keep pace with the speed of changing trends, skills, and technology students will need in the future.

· Having regular discussions about the curriculum generates opportunities to get all stakeholders involved: parents, teachers, administration, and communities. Getting input from everyone helps the school identify where it’s strong and what gaps it needs to address. It also provides the teachers with a platform over which they can share knowledge, resources, and best practices with each other.

· While textbooks aren’t cheap, they’re commonplace because they’re convenient. They supply a pre-built progression of knowledge that’s difficult to ignore for busy educators. With a good curriculum in place, institutions can break away from the over-reliance on textbooks and take a more dynamic and active approach in choosing better (and less expensive) texts.

· A curriculum connects teachers from across subject areas and grade levels to look at the bigger picture of student learning. They can work together to devise a progression of topics that build on the ones that came before and connect across disciplines. It can help them reinforce knowledge over time and prepare students for what’s coming next.

· A curriculum sets measurable outcomes and tracks the students’ progress throughout the year. It helps educators get a clear idea of what’s going on in the classrooms, pupils understand where they stand, and parents remain updated on their children’s progress.

Matthew Lynch published in Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers April 5, 2023

Socratic Seminars: Everything You Need to Know

This refers to a lecture where teachers act on questions that the students are meant to analyze, answer and critique the answers. In Socratic seminars, students help each other understand the issues, values, and ideas reflected in a text via a group discussion format. They’re responsible for facilitating the group discussion around the ideas in the given text. Students shouldn’t use the discussion to prove an argument or assert their opinions.

The procedure of a Socratic seminar involves the following steps:

Selecting an appropriate text: Socratic seminars are based on close textual analysis, so teachers need to select a text that provides sufficient avenues for discussion and interpretation. If teachers choose a simple text where the meaning is quite straightforward, there won’t be much for the students to interpret and discuss. Also, the text shouldn’t be too long to read closely in the specified amount of time.

Giving students time to prepare: Students must have time to prepare ideas before beginning the seminar. Students should annotate the text prior to the beginning of the class discussion. Teachers often designate a discussion leader who prepares a few open-ended questions that can be used to start the seminar.

Creating a classroom contract: Socratic seminars have rules that might not apply to other forms of discussion. Therefore, everyone must be aware of the norms before beginning the seminar. Some typical rules used to organize a Socratic seminar activity include:

· Talking to each other, not only to the teacher or discussion leader

· Referring to proof from the text to support the ideas

· Asking questions if one doesn’t understand what someone has said

· No interruption

· No putting down the ideas of another student

Before beginning the seminar, teachers also need to remind the students that the seminar’s objective isn’t to prove or debate a point but to more thoroughly comprehend what the author was trying to convey in the text.

The Socratic seminar: The activity often begins with the discussion leader, the teacher or a student, asking an open-ended question. It might take a few minutes for students to warm up. Teachers should allot at least 15 minutes to the activity, and it may often last 30 minutes or more. Students will be able to discuss a text for longer periods of time without requiring teacher intervention as they become more familiar with the format.

Reflecting on and evaluating: After the activity, teachers need to give students the opportunity to assess the process in general and their own performances in particular. Reflecting on the process helps students better their ability to participate in future seminars.

Matthew Lynch published in Curriculum & Instruction, Teachers March 15, 2023

Scaffolding: Everything You Need to Know

This occurs when an older individual assists a student in his/her learning process and uses their superior knowledge and experience to speed up the student’s academic progress. In this powerful educational practice, an educator may demonstrate how to solve a problem or share new information. The teacher then steps back and allows the students to practice on their own. Structured support or scaffolding is put in place before the students become fully independent. At the starting of the scaffolding process, teachers provide lots of support. They then remove the support in stages. The gradual decrease in the support level is what forms the scaffolding process. Step by step, the process imparts confidence with new skills and concepts, helping students master them. Implementing scaffolding techniques in the classroom becomes second nature to the majority of teachers.

Some fun and engaging scaffolding strategies in the classroom include:

Using prior knowledge: Students come to class with experience and knowledge of many different things. Educators who connect new learning to earlier life experiences help pupils absorb information more quickly. Pupils retain and understand fresh information more readily when they can connect it to the topics they already know.

Model: Teaching pupils how to do something by demonstrating how to do it could be an effective method to scaffolding learning. Teachers can problem-solve by talking students through the process or walking them through the steps. Teachers can also have pupils model for their classmates.

Sharing important vocabulary: Scaffolding is effective across all educational subject fields. One area where pupils may require additional scaffolding is reading. Teachers can share particular vocabulary items that may create challenges before approaching a particularly complicated text. This scaffolding method should focus on words that are important for full comprehension of the text.

Talking about it: Since individuals require time to reflect on their learning, it can be helpful to give pupils time to absorb what they’ve just seen before they apply that knowledge to their individual work. Teachers sometimes facilitate this type of reflection by putting students in small groups or pairs to talk to each other.

Showing what teachers mean: Graphic organizers can be very useful in aiding students to organize their thinking about interrelated or complex pieces of information. These visual aids help pupils how they think about one concept in connection with others. Graphic organizers can guide students through a new task or process and remind them about it.

Matthew Lynch published in Curriculum & Instruction, Education Foundations March 7, 2023

What is the State Department of Education?

The State Department of Education is concerned with the certification of teaching staff and the accreditation of educational activities. They also manage the allocation of funds within the state educational system. They assess the curriculum and its implementation and record and collect useful information worth reporting to the governor or the public. They also offer support to teachers and other staff working in education and listen to complaints and suggestions.

In the United States, education is principally the responsibility of States and their respective local authorities and communities. This means apart from the States and communities, private and public organizations of all types too can set up schools and colleges, design curricula, and decide eligibility criteria and other requirements for enrollment and graduation. The country’s funding structure for education showcases this predominant role played by the State and local governments, along with different local and private organizations and communities. When it comes to the federal funds earmarked for elementary and secondary education, the contribution doesn’t just include funds from the Department of Education. Instead, it also includes funds from other federal agencies, like the School Lunch program of the Department of Agriculture, as well as the Head Start program run by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Though the State Department of Education’s share of total education funding is comparatively small, it functions hard to get the most value for its taxpayer-provided funds by directing the money to educational avenues where it can get the best results and do the most good. This way of directing the funds is aligned with the historical progress of the federal role in the domain of education as a form of “emergency response system,” which can be called a mode of bridging the gaps in local and State support for education when critical national requirements crop up.

The official mission of the State Department of Education is to promote student achievement, along with encouraging educational excellence and ensuring equal access for preparation toward global competitiveness. This mission is executed in two key ways. First, the Department and the Secretary play the role of a leader in the ongoing national conversation over ways to boost the results of the education system for all students. Second, the Department chases its twin goals of excellence and access by administering programs that cover each area of education and include an extensive range – right from preschool education through postdoctoral research.

Matthew Lynch published in Curriculum & Instruction, Teaching & Learning Theories March 4, 2023

Classical Idealism: Everything You Need to Know

This is a collection of theories that were proposed by Plato and Socrates. These theories pondered on the nature and principles of knowledge, reality, and the human experience. It emphasizes the use of criticism to understand information and come up with useful conclusions. It believes that forms are structured in a hierarchy, at the top of which sits the various forms of good.

Plato believed people should primarily focus on their search for truth because the truth is eternal and perfect, which can’t be found in the constantly changing and imperfect world of matter. Mathematics shows the possibility of eternal truths. For instance, all points on the circumference of a perfect circle are equidistant from the center. This had always been true, even before people ascertained it, is still true, and will always be true. In other words, mathematics displays that universal truths with which everyone can agree could be found. However, mathematics covers just a solitary domain of knowledge. This made Plato believe that humans must seek other universal truths in newer areas, like politics, education, and society. Therefore, he touted the search for absolute truth as the true philosopher’s quest.

A key criterion of classical idealism is the separation of the world of matter from the world of ideas, which Plato mentioned in The Republic. According to him, at the highest point of the world of ideas sits the Good, which is the source of true knowledge. But people shouldn’t trust the world of matter, which is the constantly changing domain of sensory data. Instead, they should free themselves from their concern with matter, as it’ll let them move toward the Good. Plato wrote that this could be achieved by rising above the world of matter through the use of critical discussion or investigation (dialectic), in which an individual transcends from mere opinion to true knowledge. Plato viewed the dialectic as a medium for progressing from a matter related to the material world to one related to the world of ideas.

Classical idealism focuses on the realm of being or the world of ideas, which is believed to be the source of peace and happiness. This is in contrast to the realm of change, which is considered to be the source of pain and gloom. In the domain of education, it’s important to understand the duality of these two worlds, where one is constant while the other is changing. This will help discover and develop each individual’s full moral excellence and abilities to enable them to better serve society.