A Balanced Curriculum Model
The City of New Haven has adopted a curriculum development model called A Balanced Curriculum by Dr. David Squires. I have used this model in my classroom and have written curriculum for the State of Louisiana using this model and found it very effective in addressing the state standards. A brief overview of this process is relevant to the understanding of this unit. This process is unique in that it affords teachers and administrators a systematic and collaborative avenue to incorporate national, state, and local standards and tests, textbooks and other resources, teacher's individual strengths and knowledge with student's abilities and needs. They must decide what skills, standards, and strategies will be addressed and used to maximize student achievement and school performance. After these decisions are made, stakeholders must balance, coordinate and align the chosen curriculum. Not only does this curriculum align itself with standards and assessments but it also provides teacher a very flexible framework from which to teach. Significant tasks are chosen collaboratively with both the student's needs and teacher's creative juice in mind. Finally it provides a clear and precise roadmap using exact instructional timeframes for teachers to follow.
A Balanced Curriculum utilizes Dr. James Comer's Six Developmental Pathways and three guiding principles as an organizing framework. These pathways include the physical, psychological, linguistic, social, ethical, and cognitive doorways of student learning. Use of these principles and pathways strengthens home-to-school connections, student progress along these pathways, literary skills, and teamwork and collegiality. Celebration of successes and achievements is a must.
5 Steps of a Balanced Curriculum
Generate Units:
This process asks schools to come to a consensus about what is most important to teach, assess, and evaluate. Teachers are actively involved in the process not just told what curriculum to teach. It is site-based development. Their curriculum must be divided into units with beginning and end dates. Everyone agrees to teach the content of the designed unit.
Decide on Significant Tasks:
Significant tasks are designed to use 60% of the unit's instructional time. Significant tasks incorporate activities that align with state and district standards. These tasks should take into account the different styles of student learning and the different interests of both teacher and student. A good tool to use during this step is Gardner's List of Intelligences. Incorporating tasks with interest in each of these areas would ensure interest by all students. Keeping in mind the desired outcomes in terms of assessments would help in the alignment process.
Align the Significant Tasks with Standards and Standardized Tests:
Once the
significant tasks are written, they are plugged into the program 's on line site and are matched to the state standards in the content area, Bloom's Taxonomy, the Connecticut Mastery Test, Connecticut Character Education, and the International Reading Association /National Council of Teacher's of English. Once this is done, teachers and administrators can then return to the unit task area where any can re-examine and modify the tasks to cover any standards that have not been addressed.
Develop Format and Content Assessment Aligned to Significant Tasks, Standards and Standardized Assessments:
A format assessment provides students with practice on the actual format of the state's standardized tests. Practice using the exact format enhances student outcomes on these tests. Content assessments help teachers determine how well the information was delivered during the significant tasks. It can help determine how well students performed on these significant tasks and standards aligned with these tasks. They can help determine what skills need to be addressed during the next unit.
Insure the Balanced Curriculum is Taught, Assessed, Managed, and Improved:
This step helps teachers and administrators review, assess, and plan for improvement. Collaboration and instructional planning is conducted and records kept so improvements can be made for next year. This process builds the school capacity to improve the curriculum, instruction, assessment and the outcomes for all students.
Gardner's Nine Intelligences
To ensure that all students are reached in an optimal way, I find it very helpful to use Gardner's identified nine intelligences. These are the paths to children's learning that teachers can address in their classrooms right now. These, coupled with Comer's Pathways, are extremely important tools that must be incorporated into planning in order to engage all children in the learning process. They are:
Visual/Spatial
- learning visually and organizing ideas spatially. Students must see concepts in action in order to understand them. They have the ability to "see" things in one's mind in planning to create a product or solve a problem
Verbal/Linguistic
- learning through the spoken and written word. This intelligence was always valued in the traditional classroom and in traditional assessments of intelligence and achievement.
Mathematical/logical
- learning through reasoning and problem solving. This is also highly valued in the traditional classroom, where students were asked to adapt to logically sequenced delivery of instruction.
Bodily/Kinesthetic
- learning through interaction with one's environment. This intelligence is not the domain of "overly active" learners. It promotes understanding through concrete experience.
Musical/Rhythmic
- learning through patterns, rhythms and music. This includes not only auditory learning, but the identification of patterns through all the senses.
Intrapersonal
- learning through feelings, values and attitudes. This is a decidedly affective component of learning through which students place value on what they learn and take ownership for their learning.
Interpersonal
- learning through interaction with others. Not the domain of children who are simply "talkative" or "overly social." This intelligence promotes collaboration and working cooperatively with others.
Naturalist
- learning through classification, categories and hierarchies. The naturalist intelligence picks up on subtle differences in meaning. It is not simply the study of nature; it can be used in all areas of study..
Existential
- learning by seeing the "big picture": "Why are we here?" "What is my role in the world?" "What is my place in my family, school and community?" This intelligence seeks connections to real world understandings and applications of new learning.
Bloom's Taxonomy and Critical Thinking Skills Questions
Another important concept to integrate into the learning process is the use of Bloom's Critical Thinking Skills Questions. This graduated series of questions and activities range from straightforward knowledge responses to higher order thinking questions and exercises. The following chart provides a clear picture of questions that guide student thought but also potential activities and assessment products that use the creativity and ingenuity of Gardner's nine intelligences.
Knowledge
(table available in print form)
Comprehension
(table available in print form)
Application
(table available in print form)
Analysis
(table available in print form)
Synthesis
(table available in print form)
Evaluation
(table available in print form)