Personal Curriculum Philosophy

Personal Curriculum Philosophy:

Applying Blended Curriculum Through Differentiating Instruction

Keiser University

EDU 740

Dr. VanDeventer

11/01/2016

Personal Curriculum Philosophy 2

Personal Curriculum Philosophy

From my personal understandings of curriculum and instruction, I have realized that there

are some that are immediately set up to fail and some that are set up to succeed from the start.

On a side note, some of the curriculum that I have seen in the past, regarding teacher’s lesson

planning and methods of instruction, have gone as far as to integrate learning and fun; whilst

others, have made it a day-to-day habit of boringly teaching benchmark after benchmark with

limited success in the willingness of the students to want to learn. Because of the latter, students

have, with no doubt, failed assignments and assessments with no increase in individual academic

achievement. When the students feel no progress in academic success, few of them will be

willing to come to school every day. By the same token, students must first want to come to

school to learn because they feel a personal will to be part of the classroom setting; and secondly,

students need to look forward to the days to come because of the interactivity they achieve from

the curriculum and the excitement of learning something that is new and completely applicable

to their interests. Blended curriculums provide a framework for the classroom to integrate fun

and exciting activities that go away from traditional learning styles.

Furthermore, the main theoretical premise behind applied or blended curriculums is the

variability in differentiating instruction for each student in the classroom through an interactive-

prescribed core curriculum that is individualized based on assessment and achievement of grade

level topics. Therefore, the research provided will explain the aspects of a blended curriculum

and my personal philosophy of integrating these concepts through group-by-group rotations. My

explanation will dive deeper into an understanding of the aims and objectives of an applied

curriculum along with various instructional methods that are supported by the state, and finally,


explain what tools and materials will be supported to make learning easier and fun for the

students.

Aims and Objectives

Aims

The overall goal is to have each student becoming self-sufficient on learning various

forms of information – mathematics, social studies, English, etc… However, students must first

understand where they have difficulty in learning, in which differentiated instruction allows for

teachers and students to individualize curriculum; Scholastic explains that differentiated

instruction “…asks teachers to know their students well so they can provide each one with

experiences and tasks that will improve learning” (Robb, 2016, para. 1). This can best be

achieved through an ongoing group-by-group rotation. The overall aim of blended learning, as

determined by Griffith University, is to integrate technology to facilitate class management,

enrich the quality of the material, and use technology to reflect on the learning experience

through collaborative activities (Bath & Bourke, 2010).

Objective

Moreover, the main objectives are guided toward alleviating the stress of the instructor(s)

in the classroom, and to strengthen core academic information by way of (1) small group lessons,

(2) audio-visual representation of the lesson, and (3) applying the material to the real-world. As

explained in a blended model by Dr. Aline Sarria and Elizabeth Carrandi Molina of Broward

College, the model of group-by-group rotation varies depending on the teacher in the classroom:

“The rotation includes at least one station for online learning. Other stations might include

activities such as small group or full-class instruction…” (Sarria & Molina, 2012, p. 1).


Based on the main objectives of a blended curriculum, from Griffith University, (1)

“teaching and learning activities, and assessment tasks need to correspond with each other” (Bath

& Bourke, 2010, p. 13), (2) The instructor should layout purposeful and authentic activities, (3)

content needs to be linked among all the activities, (4) the workload of the course should mirror

the credit hours, and (5) teachers should proportion out the course through the importance of

certain course material in the class (Bath & Bourke, 2010).

Instructional Methods

As stated earlier, most of the instructional support and methods of instruction will be

provided by either the teacher or an interactive computer program – which teaches students the

underlying objectives connected to the state’s common core benchmarks. To elaborate more on

differentiated instructional strategies, Concordia University states that “differentiated instruction

is a method of designing and delivering instruction to best reach each student” (Weselby, 2016,

para. 2). To better suit the needs of each student, the teacher’s preparance on the delivery of core

concepts, applied material, and assignment of independent work will aid in the student’s

understanding of the major concepts.

Overall, blended and differentiated instruction is intended for students to work at their

own pace, as Ben Johnson (2009) points out in his article – “Differentiated Instruction Allows

Students to Succeed.” Ben Johnson also points out that this type of method is setup to allow for

multiple attempts at submission of assignments and assessments: “…when a student submits a

substandard piece of work, rather than assign a grade immediately, we can provide personalized,

individual feedback to that student … and [give] it back to the student for revision” (Johnson,

2009, para. 10). To further explain, when giving students another chance to fix or revise work


and give students another chance to pass assessments, students will try harder and want to

achieve rather than being in a constant motion of failing assignments and tests.

Conclusion

To conclude, blended curriculums provide a framework for the classroom to integrate fun

and exciting activities that go away from traditional learning styles; it has been proven that some

of the techniques taught by teachers, before common core standardization, were not as structured

and unified among all teachers. In other words, common core standards helped to create a

framework that lead to more effective learning curriculums. These types of differentiated

learning curriculums have long been accepted by many areas in the United States and have been

more recently accepted in Florida.

From the aims and objectives of blended instruction, the main interest is to apply learning

from technology to alleviate full classroom instruction lead by the teacher. Instead students are

more likely to see classrooms that utilize a multitude of resources; group-by-group rotation is

one of the various methods of choice by many instructors to optimize the amount of time in each

area dealing with online instruction, applied material, and independent work.


References

Bath, D., & Bourke, J. (2010). Blended learning. Retrieved from Griffith University:

https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/267178/Getting_started_with_ble

nded_learning_guide.pdf

Robb, L. (2016). What is differentiated instruction? Retrieved from Scholastic:

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/what-differentiated-instruction

Sarria, A., & Molina, E. C. (2012). Model 1: rotation. Retrieved from

charterschoolconference.com:

http://www.charterschoolconference.com/2013/handouts/Carrandi_Blended_Learning_M

odel.pdf

Weselby, C. (2016, July 5). What is differentiated instruction? Examples of how to differentiate

instruction in the classroom. Retrieved from Concordia University: http://education.cu-

portland.edu/blog/teaching-strategies/examples-of-differentiated-instruction/

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