Content Standards: Connecting Standards-Based Curriculum to Instructional Planning
Wrap Up
In this module you’ve learned about the importance of connecting content standards to the curriculum and to lesson planning. As you watch the movie below, you will review a summary of the key points of the module about content standards and its related topics (time: 1:22).
Transcript: Wrap Up
Narrator: In this module, you’ve learned about the connection between content standards, benchmarks, curriculum, and lesson planning. You’ve also learned that content standards provide a clear outline of the educational goals students should know and be able to do. They provide an inventory of the essential knowledge, skills, and understandings needed to achieve competence in a content area. School districts are striving to increase student performance. At the same time, school community leaders have worked to create standards-based reform in an effort to increase student performance. Matching school curricula around clearly defined standards provides students more opportunities to study a challenging curriculum. When teachers make decisions about curricular planning, they need to review and consider the students’ individual characteristics related to learning. In addition, you learned that when teachers have a clear picture in their mind of what their intended learning outcomes are, they are better able to design appropriate and effective instructional activities and assessments that will guide students to mastery of the intended learning outcomes. Finally, you learned that the standards-based lesson plan provides an opportunity for the teacher to make academic learning relevant to students’ lives and experiences by intertwining content knowledge, process skills, and life habits.
Revisiting Initial Thoughts
Think back to your responses to the Initial Thoughts questions at the beginning of this module. After working through the Perspectives & Resources, do you still agree with those responses? If not, what aspects about them would you change?
How will Ms. Begay know she is teaching her students everything they need to learn this year?”
What should Ms. Begay find out about her students before planning her curriculum units and lessons?”
How will Ms. Begay know if her lesson plans are effective and her students are learning?”
What should Ms. Begay know about creating effective lesson plans?
When you are ready, proceed to the Assessment section.