Curriculum Planning for Intellectual Challenge

1. Curriculum Planning for Intellectual Challenge Elena Stanescu- Bellu

2. Why an Intellectually Challenging Curriculum?

3. Why are teachers’ expectations important ? • “What teachers are willing to try in the classroom, relationships teachers build with students, the extent to which teachers encourage students, and the general climate teachers create-all of which affect learning-grow out of expectations”(Jussim, Eccles, Madon, 1996) • All students can achieve when “ the teachers and school believe they can and take responsibility to make it happen” ( pg.128) • Both high-achieving and low achieving students are more likely to fail lower level courses and do better in upper level courses; • Whether students enter college or not, complex thinking skills are essentially for securing a job in the future;

4. How to raise expectations ? Systemically expectations can be raised by: • Strengthening the curriculum’s academic challenge and student academic support; • Teaching an intellectually rich curriculum, responsive to one’s students as opposed to a test prep curriculum; • Thinking beyond students’ level of performance and even beyond closing the achievement gap; • Eliminating the lower level courses;

5. How can a curriculum be planned so that it is academically demanding and teaches a variety of academic skills ? Curriculum planning for intellectual challenge can be connected to planning around “big ideas”, and in relationship to (and possibly) with one’s students A intellectually challenging curriculum addresses higher order thinking a useful planning tool is Blooms’ taxonomy which identifies six level of thinking and lists verbs which describe each level

6. How to use Bloom’s taxonomy ? The six levels of thinking identified by Bloom are: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation • Make an inventory of the levels of thinking addressed by the current curriculum • Identify thinking most likely to be developed through one’s planning and teaching • Project beyond the students’ current grade level to the kinds of thinking they should be developing in order to be succeed at higher level of schooling;

7. How to assist students in learning ? Building enabling strategies into curriculum helps students to think more complexly than they currently do by themselves.

8. Examples of Enabling Strategies: • Modeling – the teachernot only shows students how to do something , but also talks them through the thinking process; • Scaffolding • a useful strategy to bridge students’ current academic performances with potential • Students learn how to do something new and complex gradually, in stages.

9. Teachers’ perspectives about knowledge and teaching influence curriculum planning and teaching in the classroom

10. Different perspectives about Knowledge

11. Different perspectives on teaching

12. Academic expectations, teachers’ view on knowledge and curriculum content influence students’ profiles as learners.

13. Learning profiles

14. “If teachers plan and teach challenging and interesting curriculum and provide academic support as needed, students will tend to rise to the occasion” (Sleeter, pag 129)