Curriculum Planning

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Curriculum Planning
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How is curriculum organized?

• Expanding Communities
• Generalizations/Big Ideas
• Goal-Oriented Topical
• Culture Universals (Primary Grades)

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What tools will you need for curriculum planning?
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Before you begin to plan a unit, you will need to
understand and research the content!
You will also need to understand the students
prior knowledge about the topic you are covering.

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Pedagogical Content Knowledge

• Inquiry into Student Prior Knowledge and Learning
• Inquiry into Curriculum, Content, and Planning
• Inquiry into Teaching

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Content Gathering Model

• http//www.fldoe.org/bii/curriculum/sss/sss1996.as
  p
• http//www.socialstudies.org/standards/strands/
• What are some possible themes or topics with the
  Immigration umbrella?
• How might we expand this umbrella to include
  facts? Where might we get these facts?

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What is a Generalization?

• Generalizations are relationships between two or
  more concepts.
• May also be described as big ideas or goals.

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Examples of Generalizations

• New inventions lead to change in ways of living.
• As human beings interact with the physical
  environment, both they and it are changed.
• Because the peoples of the world are
  interdependent, the behaviors of one group of
  people affects the lives of the other groups.
• Families are a primary means of socialization in
  all cultures.
• Written laws clarify the rules by which a society
  operates and promote fair and equal treatment of
  its members.
• The survival of a multicultural society relies
  upon most citizens agreeing to a core of commonly
  held values (e.g., justice, equality, liberty).
• Compromise is necessary in most situations
  because continuous conflict has severe
  consequences.

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Goal-Oriented Topical Curriculum Planning

• Goals phrased in terms of intended student
  outcomes-capabilities and dispositions to be
  developed within students.

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Cultural Universals

• Food, clothing, shelter, transportation,
  communication, occupations, social rules,
  government and laws.
• Develop understanding about how that aspect
  functions in local community, contemporary U.S.,
  past, and other cultures today.
• Put familiar into historical, geographical, and
  cultural perspective.

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Types of Goals

• Understanding
• Appreciation
• Life Application

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Your Task

• Think of a generalization/big idea about
  democracy that you have encountered in your own
  experience or feel important in developing
  democratic citizens

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Concepts and Conceptual Thought

• Concepts Ideas Abstract categories or classes
  of meaning Refined and enhanced over time.
  Deals with meaning of words. Can be concrete
  places, objects, institutions, events, ways of
  thinking, feeling, and behaving.

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Examples of Concepts

• island, village, city, nation, river ,democracy,
  revolution, power, poverty, equator, holiday,
  supply, scarcity, ocean, colony ,family war map
  suburbs prejudice transportation desert community
  freedom, culture, mountain, boundary, North,
  peace, assembly line, earth, nationality, money,
  neighborhood, waste, shelter, conflict

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Key Ideas to be Developed

• What knowledge is fundamental to the
  accomplishment of the instructional goals and how
  might this be developed in students?

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Your Task

• Identify the key concepts or key ideas that are
  implicit in the generalization/big ideas that we
  have discussed as we have explored the various
  aspects of effective democratic social studies.

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Facts

• Facts are necessary for building conceptual
  knowledge and generalizations. The teacher needs
  to make judgments as to 1) whether the factual
  information is needed to elaborate on or explain
  main ideas, 2) the extent to which it is
  frequently used in ordinary living, 3) whether
  the information is likely to remain important for
  a long period of time, and 4) whether the
  information is an important part of the common
  culture and is therefore something

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Examples

• Fact New Orleans typically is warmer in the
  winter than Milwaukee.
• Generalization Climate varies from place to
  place.

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Your task

• How do you make sense of the relationship between
  facts, concepts, and generalizations?
• What are some underlying facts that will need to
  be taught in order to teach the generalization
  and concepts you wrote earlier?

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Generalizations and You

• Working with a partner, find the generalizations,
  concepts, and big ideas in the worksheet.
• Consider In what ways do these generalizations
  or big ideas influence our ability to model and
  instruct effective democratic social studies?
• In what ways might these statements be rewritten
  in order to alter the goal of the big idea or
  generalization, or make it mean something
  different?