My Course Description
As the official description states, this class was all about learning how to develop a curriculum for K-12 students. Part of this was integrating research-based instructional strategies into the actual teaching process and exploring multiple ways to assess student knowledge. The biggest thing we did in this class was creating a unit in PLC groups we worked with all semester. This entailed each of us planning a lesson that fits with our unit’s topic and working as a group to unpack Common Core and Maine State learning standards. This was one of the classes I took when UNE first shut down because of COVID, so we all learned a really important lesson about flexibility. This is something we’d talked about a lot in Education classes as a quality you should have as a teacher, but we didn’t have much practical experience with it, so being thrown into online learning wasn’t all bad.
Official Course Description
“This three-credit course introduces students to curriculum theory, instructional strategies, and assessment and how it relates to the design of effective lessons and units. Students will explore a variety of approaches to curriculum and create original lessons and units as they learn to synthesize the necessary elements of education in the 21st century.”
Work Sample
This is one of the biggest collaborative efforts I’ve been a part of in my Education courses. My group and I became what is known as a professional learning community (PLC) where our job was to design a comprehensive unit of study for some topic. We had to work together to choose and unpack standards, as well as design a summative assessment that could be used in conjunction with the unit. In addition, we each had to plan one lesson apiece, but we were able to use each other as resources, so we talked a lot about effective teaching strategies and the best ways to test student learning. Not only did this project make me feel more comfortable working in a team setting, it also taught me a valuable lesson about trusting my teammates.
