Curriculum Building

Six point lesson plan for researching educational resources

1. Focus and Review

• The teacher restates the learning mind-set from the previous instruction, linking it to the new lesson. "You'll remember that " we previously discussed separating the concepts of goals and objectives. Once those targets are defined, we must begin the selection and qualification of resources to meet those needs. This lesson will introduce you to a small set of  research tools to find these resources.

2. Objectives

• Students will be aware of a small selection of Internet tools and resources available for curriculum building with links to an expanded set of resources.
• Students will use a web browser and word processor to copy data from Internet resource collections to a word processing outline of a unit plan.

3. Teacher Input

• Students receive handout with map of CROP web site and the links to tutorial on curriculum building and a handout of the tutorial web page:
• http://www.ceap.wcu.edu/Houghton/Learner/NCcurricplanning/quickcurric.html
• Instructor demonstrates each of the eight steps in this tutorial once. The phrase "farm animals" is used at each step to search for relevant resources.  Though links to more extensive sets of research tools are provided, they are only mentioned not demonstrated in the interest of time. Students are encouraged to explore them if their needs are not met by the tools introduced in this lesson. At steps 1, 2, 5 and 7 take the first link at that number leaving for another time any links to expanded resources.

• At step 2, take the Unit Plan link; first copy the Unit Plan data from the web page to a word processor document. Then find the link in the unit plan page to the NC Standard Course of Study and find and copy to the appropriate place in the word processor the needed objectives.

• At step 6:
• at  the Hunter Library link, search for farm animals, limit the search to Hunter Library's Curriculum Materials Center (CMC) and to videotape resources. If time, repeat the search and limit to the CMC but do not limit to videotape. (Note - many new resources have come into the CMC and may not yet be cataloged.  Please see the CMC staff with your topic.)
• at Periodicals, do a quick search of ERIC using the "farm animals" topic.
• at Periodicals  - Yahooligan's also search for "farm animals" and skip the hunt for magazine and news stories but indicate they could do this on their own.
At step 8:
• at Bookstore, use the link to Children's Books by Age;
• at K-12 Libraries use the link to Dade County and select Elementary Libraries;

4. Guided Practice

• Instructor repeats these eight steps and after each step asks students to also complete this step for their needs.  If students do not have a diskette, they will have to get a copy of the practice file from someone that does. If using diskettes, they should save (control S keys on Windows keyboard; Apple S on Mac) after each copy and paste to prevent loss of their work if the computer crashes.

5. Independent Practice

• Outside of class each student will complete these seven steps again for their chosen topic.

6. Closure

• When completed assignments are returned they will include comments that will lead to further discussion on this process.

  Page author: Houghton