If you could purchase the perfect school wide curriculum for elementary, what would it look like? Of course we need to understand the curriculum and teach it and use these as tools. but would recommend if you could build a school and had the $$$? I need some vision.
READING:
How about Phono-graphix, followed by Reading Naturally, with whole group instruction in Visualizing/Verbalizing,and then when the kid can decode…..Accelerated Reader.
Neighbor teacher/students switch
One room, readers reading Acc. Reading (Independent Reading)
: FLuent Readers work on AR while in the other room teacher instructs in small groups of extra practice in Phono-Graphix
SPELLING:
No Friday tests that would soon be forgotten anyway?
SUPER SPELLER of PG
MATH
Saxon Math
Language
Step Up to Writing
Daily Oral Language
Would you do journaling?
Science:
A science teacher comes in while general ed has PREP
Re: Ideal Curriculum
Audiblox in preschool and kindergarten. That way kids would have the cognitive skills they need to really learn all the academics. We would have less sped kids.
Better screening for sensory (auditory, motor and visual) deficits in these early years as well. Early intervention, 6 months of OT, VT and or speech in these early years could accomplish what takes years later on.
I agree with phonographix. I would also like to see science and social studies as enrichment. Science and social studies taught this way would bring back the joy of learning that gets lost in school today.
Re: Ideal Curriculum
Phono-Graphix followed by Rewards from Sopris West. V&V only for those students who need it (not all).
I’d skip Accelerated Reader and invest the money in good books for the library, great teachers, and dedicated daily time for reading. I did extensive research on AR and do *not* think it is the best way for schools to go. Www.bookadventure.com offers almost the same product free.
Sequential Spelling from Avko for children who have problems with spelling (very easy to use in a classroom setting). Two math programs, because Saxon is not ideally suited to all children. Don’t care much for DOL or journaling, especially for dyslexics, but they work for some children.
Set up a non-profit foundation to provide developmental vision, CAPD and sensory integration screening and services, Audiblox and/or PACE, FFW, and Interactive Metronome — for children who would be likely to benefit.
Literature approaches to science and history. Science lab activities.
Daily P.E. with options for lifetime sports such as swimming, tennis, karate, etc.
Nancy
Re: Ideal Curriculum
You know it is interesting sometimes what a person thinks when asked about curriculum. I ponder direct instruction, small numbers, teaching what students don’t know at their instructional level not at a frustrational or independent level. I have never believed in boxed merchandise. There is not amount of $$$ that makes up for sound practices of instruction. I could teach an entire curriculum with a newspaper - it’s not the boxed “thing” it is well trained teachers using methods of instruction that create learners who can think and discover answers. Face it, most of the junk we teach isn’t worthwhile, but teaching how to learn and think is what we all need to be lifetime learners.
I’m not sure it’s a matter of $$. For me the perfect elementary school curriculum would treat science and social studies as wonderful enrichment subjects - no textbooks. Math would be math - moving through the traditional operations centered around the idea that math is a kind of language tool that communicates concepts that can be communicated in no other way and I’d work to integrate the use of math as much as possible into the other subjects.
Writing would be taught as a subject unto itself.
Reading would be literature based in the higher grades.
Art every day. Music just as often.
Health and physical education.
The only $$ I’d need would be to have computers with Internet connection in every classroom.