Few things are more important to classroom success than good planning, and a well-thought-out overall sense of where you are going with your class helps a lot--especially if students also have a good sense of what they are supposed to be doing in your class.State standards and Special Professional Association (SPA) standards should be exceptionally useful, but, often, they're not nearly as helpful as they might be.
Please take a close look at the South Dakota State Social Studies Standards and the National Council of Social Studies Teachers standards in any *one* (1) social studies area of your choice. You should find the standards at the links here:
http://doe.sd.gov/contentstandards/documents/SocialStudies_9-12.pdf
After class today, please read TSSFFAP Chapter 3 (Once Around the Race Course: Developing
Effective Social Sciences Curriculum) and do the on-line quiz. Then please come back to this post and comment.
Do the state and SPA standards tie in well with the TSSFFAP suggestions on curriculum planning? If so, how? If not, why not? Do you think familiarity with the state and SPA standards will help you become a more effective teacher? Do you think that they explain well to parents, school board members, etc. what students should be getting in their social studies classes? Would you want to be evaluated in terms of how well your students do in matching up to these particular standards?
Do the state and SPA standards tie in well with the TSSFFAP suggestions on curriculum planning? If so, how? If not, why not? Do you think familiarity with the state and SPA standards will help you become a more effective teacher? Do you think that they explain well to parents, school board members, etc. what students should be getting in their social studies classes? Would you want to be evaluated in terms of how well your students do in matching up to these particular standards?
As stated in the textbook, at one time, the state standards were very useful in helping educators plan his or her curriculum. Then in the 80's and 90's, the guides became tools for the power hungry bureaucrats. Today, the standards have gotten a lot better and more helpful for the teachers. They clearly state what the objective is for the students and it shows what points the teacher has to get across to the students. I think that they will help me to become a more effective teacher because it gives me structure and a starting point of what I have to teach. As said before, they are pretty straight forward and explain to people what needs to get done in the classroom. It is kind of a scary thing when a teacher is evaluated by how well the students grasp the material described in the standards. I feel that there are some really good teachers out there that might not get the credit they deserve because of the students' test scores. There is definitely some pressure there.
ReplyDeleteOverall yes, the standards tie in well with planning a curriculum because it tells you specifically what the students need to be learning. From there you can plan how you are going to teach that information in the way that is most benefical to your class and to you as a teacher. It's hard to say I want to be judge based on how my students are doing based on these standards, however, at the same time there isn't a lot else to base things off. At the same time, sometimes student's cannot grasp the content they should be learning,no matter how good of a teacher they have. It's sort of a weird, win-win, win-lose, situation. I think for parents, if they are that invested in their child they look at these standards, it gives them a pretty clear indication of what students should be learning, so long as they understand where their child is in the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteI think the standards and planning a curriculum go hand in hand. The standards are a great tool in helping you prepare what you need to teach and what will be coming up during the school year that you need to prepare your students for. They are a simple way of showing everyone what the students are expected to learn and know at each grade level. I would be fine being evaluated in terms of how well my students match up to the standards, as long as the evaluators understood that there is only a finite amount of time to go through everything, so some parts may get skimmed over compared to other parts. I think that's just the life of a teacher.
ReplyDeleteI feel that state standards for South Dakota give teachers, parents, and students a good playing field to promote learning. Parents and teachers' have a guideline of what subject material children should be put through at different grade levels. The teacher is able to build their lesson plans around the appropriate standards. This takes stress off the teacher, as they can plan easier, and they don’t have to dig as much to find out what is expected of them in their content area as far as content goes. The part of evaluation of the teacher’s performance is a two way street. This adds stress to any teacher as they have to account for everyone’s learning ability in the classroom. The ideal scenario would be that everyone tested would be without mental handicaps. Though with legislation like No Child Left Behind, students can no longer be excluded from the classroom based on abilities they do or don’t showcase. Thus multiple learning types are added to the student pool in the classroom. The teacher cannot be physically evaluated on how well the class does overall. Some students are special, and are in the classroom to build social relationships. Judging teachers on the performance based pay system is a bad idea, as the evaluators often discriminate the merit of the teacher as they do not take into account who they teach. They only look at test scores and not the individual student growth. The public and government officials want a blanket effect for education, and by utilizing this teacher based pay, they hope to remedy it. By awarding some of the outstanding teachers they hope pressure their coworkers into doing better. I feel accountability is key, and I want to be evaluated on the success of my kids though not by this current method. Standards help promote success, though if one is just focused on the standards they will not be successful.
ReplyDeleteI think that the state standards are a good thing for most class rooms it gives a standard that everyone should meet and makes sure that kids are all learning the things that they are supposed to. I do like the fact that it puts the whole state on the same standard so everyone is able to learn at the same rate and level so if you transfer schools you won’t be totally behind in a subject, I also feel like it is a good idea so it gets students all across the state to start to think more critically as they get older so that everyone in the state will grow to be a functioning citizen.
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