The Curriculum : Differentiated Curriculum Essay

Early childhood education curriculums are becoming a national curriculum in most countries. With more governments and society thinking about education of under-fives we are seeing shifts in thinking and education to meet the changing world. We are developing children skills for the future to create a society where children feel they belong and can contribute to society. Curriculums are being influenced my social, political, cultural, historical and theoretical issues that are impacting different curriculums in the world. I am going to explore and develop my understanding about three different curriculums to recognise the different influences affecting curriculums. I am going to explore the curriculums of Te Whāriki: New Zealand, Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia and Curriculum for Excellence: Scotland. This will allow me to develop an understanding of other curriculums which I have not heard about to discover other way to education that I have not been taught in teacher’s college.

This chapter is all about redefining curriculum themes. The themes teachers do is just topical themes that actually may not benefit the students at all when it comes to development. We need to observe the children and find out what is their interests and use that to expand their learning. If we are going to have a curriculum it should be focus on were the kids are at and not from just a textbook. We need to go from traditional theme planning to developmental theme planning which is focused on the students and helping to develop them. This developmental theme planning will help when students are asking questions, their curiosity, their strengths and interests and their play. Children love to play whether it is pretend, exploration (they want to see how things work, feel, taste and etc.), construction or playing games with rules. Also, using things like birthday parties, fears of children like floods, earthquakes, cleanup, and setup to help provide developmental themes for the systems. It is important we have props beside toys that children can use when it comes to playing so they can explore different things. We should make themes off of observations that we see from our students.

The setting is Washington Elementary School in West Orange, NJ. The grade I picked is first grade. The age group in the class is between the ages of five and seven. The subjects they learn are math, language arts, social studies, and writing. But they focus more on reading and math throughout the day. There are 8 girls and 8 boys in the classroom which makes 16 students in total. The class is divided into three racial and ethnic groups which are Latino or Hispanic, African Americans, and Asian American. There are about 1 Asian American, 6 Latino or Hispanic, and 9 African Americans.

For the Fall of 2016, I worked at Cornatzer Elementary School in Davie County. Cornatzer Elementary School was a Title I school where 60% of the students were considered economically disadvantaged and qualified for free/reduced lunch. I worked in a 1st grade classroom that was composed of 25 students; out of those 25, 15 were male and 10 were female. The majority of the class was Caucasian; however, there were 4 Hispanic children, and 1 of two or more races. During a typical week, we had 5 children who received pull out services. Specifically, we had one student who qualified for English Language Learner (ELL) services, 3 students who solely needed speech services, and 1 student who received speech and behavior interventions.

The school that I work in is located in Frederick, Maryland. We have nearly 800 students that attend Kindergarten through 5th grade, and with diverse backgrounds. The school is located in a very prosperous neighborhood, with several additional sections of townhomes and apartment complexes which house Section 8. All of these are within walking distance to the school. In Frederick County there are over 2,500 ELL students and more than 11,000 that are FARM (Free And Reduced Meals) students. Our graduation rate is superb with an over 93% graduation rate and a 3.5% dropout rate. This

In our school, we have 471 students. There are 274 boys and 257 girls. This number is a little higher due to students in the Exceptional Children Have Opportunities (ECHO) program and those shuttled to other schools for special services. Of the current 471 that attend our school every day, 78% are low income, 6% are English Learners, 18% are labeled

The classroom setting is kindergarten with a mixed environment of general education students and special education students. The child can do his work; however, he is resistant by saying he does not want to read or write because it is boring. Being WZ one-to-one paraprofessional is challenging since the child has behavioral issues that requires professional assistance for developmental support.

For this scenario, I am a general education 6th grade math teacher, at the amazing campus of Our Lady of the Lake Middle School. The school that I work for has 8 periods each day, and I teach 6 out of those 8 periods. The classes do range for each period, but I roughly have 23 students in each class and with a diverse set of students; Hispanic (50.1%), White (40.8%), Black (4.8%), two or more races (3.1%), Asian (1%), and Pacific Islander (.2%). At Our Lady of the Lake Middle School the student’s population is broken down to 46% females and 54% males that attend the school. Socioeconomic details for the school is broken down to; eligible free lunch (43.3%), eligible fore reduced lunch (8.2%), and ineligible for free/reduced lunch (48.5%).

Currently, I am student teaching at Alfred E. Zampella PS #27 School in the district of Jersey City. The school is located in a busy city, next to John F. Kennedy St. which is especially busy in the morning and during rush hour. This results in several late students on a day to day basis. On the other hand, this school is also highly accessible and as a little over a thousand students. The school has grade levels from kindergarten to 8th grade, and has a mix of general, special, and inclusion education classrooms. Typically, families that enroll their students into this school are of lower-middle socio-economic class, and tend to be majority Hispanic, Indian, and African American, with few Caucasians and Asians. This school provides a variety of special programs for their ESL students and special need students. Students may be offered speech language pathology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, ESL programs, reading recovery, and counseling.

Paraprofessionals have become commonplace in the modern school system. Due to an increased emphasis on the inclusion of students with disabilities in the general education classroom, the use of paraprofessionals has concurrently increased (Douglas, Chapin, & Nolan, 2016). The glaring question is whether these teacher assistants provide a necessary service for students with disabilities or if they are inadvertently hindering their success. While some educators claim paraprofessionals are an essential aspect of student services, others argue the potentially adverse academic and social consequences. Despite their increased prominence, paraprofessional’s lack of training, role confusion, extensive responsibility, and intrusion on student-peer

The purpose of this particular section of this web page is to provide teachers and administration with options for adequately preparing their classrooms with qualified paraprofessionals to assist formal pedagogues. It strongly appears that these aforementioned qualifications that paraprofessionals must fulfill in order to work in this position are exceedingly fair, and are no less than the children within America's public school systems require.

Taking care of a boisterous class of first graders is not an easy task, especially for an eleven-year-old. Since the summer of 2011, I have been a teacher’s assistant at my former elementary school, Argonne. Argonne is a year-round school, and the teachers are always in need of volunteers during the busy summer months. As a volunteer, I help grade papers, file documents, chaperone field trips, teach math lessons, and even lead physical education classes. I serve as an aid in the classroom and work individually with students.

Silas Willard elementary school is mostly populated with students that are white. Hispanic and black students are the next two ethnicities. There is a 57.4% of kids coming from a low income family, which is awfully sad because that is more than half the students. The kids with limited English is only about 3% so that shouldn’t really be an issue. It says only 5% are homeless which seems pretty low, but could be something that they could fix in the future. The mobility rate is pretty low at 12.5%. The student attendance rate is at 94% which I think is really impressive. I think that demographic wise, the children the issues seem to be pretty low, so I feel like there shouldn’t be too many challenges for them. The class size for this school

The modern classroom has many challenges that face it. Shrinking budgets, less parental involvement, higher expectations, and growing class sizes, just to name a few. If this list was not daunting enough you also have the special needs students that have an array problems in your classroom that need specialized attention, lessons and seating. There are many forms of diverse learners from students who suffer from ADHD to physical disabilities to students with autism to ones that are bullied in school. There are so many things going on in our students lives we sometimes forget they have lives, pressures and disabilities that affect their performance and attitude in our class that have a profound impact on how they learn. For this paper I

Curriculum is a term often highlighted during discourse about education and most commonly understood as a policy with overt leaning outcomes for teachers to apply and achieve. Ornstein and Hunkins (1998), as cited by Selvaraj (2010), defined curriculum based on two lenses; micro and macro, which identify the term as both policy towards certain goals and what students experience with consideration for relevant theories and principles central to its development and implementation. However, Wilson (n.d.) argued that curriculum is not restricted to certain individuals, subjects and environments, since teaching and learning can also occur beyond the scope of official curriculum (Ebert & Culyer, as cited in Marsh, Clarke & Pittaway, 2014). I believe this interpretation is the closest to the true nature of curriculum, or education, as there are more complex layers to curriculum than just a written guideline. For example, not one curriculum is similar to another because it is subjected to influences from continuum number of factors, such as politics and economy. Hence, it is wise to conclude that curriculum could not be defined based on a singular perspective due to its dependability on context.