Teacher and Student Perspectives on Curriculum

For many years, teachers have often wondered how can they align their teaching with the National Standards (DedEd Philippines) or any curriculum adapted by the school. It is a common practice that teachers would read and interpret this curriculum on their own without really having any support or adequate training on how the curriculum author designed it to be. This ongoing practice has created learning gaps.

Perspectives of a Teacher

• "How come the curriculum content and skills are almost the same for every grade level?" (We just did it last term, why do we need to repeat?)

• "Why is there so much to teach for one school year?" (content overload)

• "How do we know which one to teach first?" (sequencing)

Perspectives of a Student

(the image above says a lot)

• "We know that already. Why do we need to repeat?"

• "There are too much homework and projects to work on?"

• "Do we really need to learn that before we can do this?"

Perspectives of a Curriculum Specialist

• The design of the curriculum has an educational theoretical basis

• The curriculum should meet the minimum learning standards but it continues to challenge each and every school to be creative so the optimum is reached

• Deeper learning happens when there is integration among content, skills, and context

Implications in Lesson Planning

• Design or select teaching materials that are appropriate:

A. Focused

- what do I want to teach?

B. Balanced

- the developmental sequence is in

practice while opportunities

to progress is considered

C. Within a Context

- why am I teaching this?

- how relevant can this be?

• Design activities that will enable students to explore, inquire and apply their skills and knowledge in various disciplines (this will make students' and teachers' life easier especially when planning for assessments)

• Make time and opportunities for retrieval practice beyond the memorization of information. Our students need to connect new information that they are learning from their previous learning. Simply recalling them using flashcards, worksheets will only encourage them to remain at the lowest level of the thinking process. Let's lead our students beyond survival or coping. Instead, let us join them in the process of connecting the dots even when they are young. Thinking, just like any other skills should be practiced and modeled.

We never would like to see this again in our classrooms...