This week at Summers-Knoll School, we held our annual curriculum night(s). Hosted virtually to make it more accessible for parents on-the-go and split into two nights – with the Preschool through 4th grade on Tuesday and the 5th through 8th grade on Thursday – our parent attendance rate was stellar. It was so great to see such full houses. For those who were not able to attend live or who want to review what was shared, video recordings of the curriculum night(s) will be made available. Suffice to say, I have been immersed in the act of articulating “curriculum” with SK’s teachers and parents this week. As such, in this post, I will discuss the meaning of “curriculum” broadly and share a bit about how we engage in the curriculum design process at Summers-Knoll in particular.
In the year 2000, I received my elementary teaching license and master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Since then, as a classroom teacher and a teacher educator, a large portion of my professional life has been consumed with curriculum design.
Every teacher is a curriculum designer. It’s one of the primary things we do. Defined simply, curriculum is the “what” of teaching – it’s the learning goals (or intentions) themselves and the content students learn as they make their way toward those goals; it’s both the end-product and the experiences in which learners engage to create an end-product. If curriculum is the “what,” instruction is the “how.” Running like a red thread through both curriculum and instruction is the “why,” which starts and constantly returns to the “who.” For whom are we designing curriculum? What do they need, and why do they need it? In other words, how will the learning experiences I design engage students in the creative process of building particular types of skills and knowledge, and why do my students need these skills and this knowledge now? How can they apply (or transfer) their newly acquired skills and knowledge in meaningful ways? These are the essential questions teachers ask themselves throughout the curriculum design process.
As a process, curriculum design is iterative. At Summers-Knoll, it begins with thinking about who our students are and what they need, and then turning to content area standards (e.g., Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, C3 and Michigan State Social Studies Standards) to inform our planning. Using an Understanding by Design (UbD) perspective, it involves backward planning: identifying the learning goals first and then planning a systematic series of learning opportunities through which students develop the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve those goals.
At SK, we add another layer to the UbD framework by embracing a project-based learning pedagogy (i.e., approach to teaching). This summer, as a faculty, we read The Project Habit: Making Rigorous PBL Doable. During our August professional development sessions, with this shared text as a reference, we engaged in several stages of curriculum design or “design habits” (McDowell and Miller, 2022). First, the teachers reflected upon the 2022 – 2023 school year and created a whole school, quarter-by-quarter map of the previous years’ projects. With knowledge and awareness of what SK students experienced last year, teachers then turned to thinking about their incoming students; they returned to their grade level standards for each of the content areas; they talked with one another about their ideas for projects, shared resources, and realized opportunities for collaboration across classrooms and grade levels; they identified potential community partners. Through these dynamic dialogues, each teacher’s year-long vision for their curriculum crystalized further, and they plotted their four main projects onto our map for the 2023-2024 school year.
Then the students arrived! With students, teachers bring their curricular plans to life through their instruction. Through an iterative cycle of assessment, planning, and instruction, teachers get to know their students as people and as learners. Ongoing, formative assessment enables teachers to be responsive to their students. As such, teachers are constantly adjusting and refining their curricular plans and their enactment of their curricula. While the curriculum design process is initiated and led by the teacher, in reality, a curriculum is brought to life through action – teaching and learning – and in the hands of a responsive teacher, a curriculum is actually co-constructed with the students.
At Summers-Knoll, each week, I meet with each teacher individually to continue the conversation about their curriculum and instruction, and we meet as a faculty every Wednesday afternoon to continue our collective dialogue. Teachers are constantly reflecting, assessing, adjusting, and refining their curriculum and instruction, and I am honored to accompany them in this deeply complex and creative process.