Brown ch. 9-11 Kumar ch. 13

Brown ch. 9-11 Kumar ch. 13

Curriculum design can be daunting at first; you have to think about so many different areas; the setting, classroom characteristics, teacher characteristics, course content and evaluation requirements. When developing a skeleton for a curriculum plan it is essential that you take in consideration of the kinds of learners you have in your classroom. You have to look at their background, their learning styles, what they need to learn, what materials they have available to them and goals of the curriculum, students and teacher. When making a course syllabus as a teacher you really need to make sure that when teaching is going on you are going to be making changes constantly, no teacher follows or should follow the syllabus to a t. Constant redesign of the syllabus should happen because the topic of conversation could go further in one direction than you previously planned, this is not a bad thing. When this happens teachers should take advantage of this because students are engrossed and there is meaningful conversation happening. Texts should help with this meaningful learning, not be the number one source of it, especially with L2 learners. Texts should support learning and give another outlet for further learning but it should not be the only articles that shape it.

The first element of a lesson that at teacher should think about is the goal of the lesson; what the students will accomplish after the lesson is completed, how you as the teacher will carry out the lesson and how the students will take what they have learned and apply it to their lives. The objectives help the teacher organize these goals and bring them to life. Teachers should be constantly thinking about the terminal and enabling objectives as well as the materials they will need to carry out the assignment. Beginning lesson plans the teacher should have a clear set of goals and objectives they want to cover as well as the materials and texts they are going to use with keeping assessments in mind. Teachers should not be discouraged is the topic goes off course or if a topic or assignment lasts longer or not as long as they planned, teachers need to think on their feet and run with it.

Thinking of techniques can also help teachers know what direction they want the lesson to go. It should be clear from the beginning if the lesson is open-ended or structured, student centered or teacher centered, in other words controlled or free, but this does not mean if you are teaching a lesson with controlled characteristics you should not have free characteristics. In the real world classroom it is not so black and white, the students and teacher the lines will blur.