One of the difficult decisions I still need to make for next year is whether or not I should prescribe a curriculum path for my students. In this year's MCL attempt, I have used a preplanned curriculum sequence for students. Students have had the option of working toward meeting the language arts or social studies standards, but within those content areas, there has been little choice when it comes to what to do next.
The question is, is this okay? And, even if it's okay to prescribe a curriculum sequence, is it the best way to engage young adolescents?
At worst, a prescribed curriculum sequence hasn't done much if any harm. It certainly has been convenient to follow the classroom spreadsheets as they have filled one box/chart at a time from left to right. It has also been convenient to analyze the progress of individual students. I could just note the target dates for each standard to be met and see where each student was sitting on the curriculum path at that particular moment. Some students benefited from the ease with which they could note exactly what the next step should be. In short, students weren't really any worse off than they would have been in the years before MCL.
There was one point in the year, however, where the prescribed sequence presented a difficulty. For much of this school year, a prescribed curriculum sequence seemed of little consequence. Students worked at a reasonable pace, some faster some slower, but all relatively engaged with the content. The first hints of a problem arose when the majority of my students found themselves simultaneously locked into two major undertakings. The first task was the reading of a teacher selected novel, often a challenge of focus for sporadic young adolescent interests. The second was a rather lengthy and brain wrenching Civil War unit. This was an error on my part as I failed to realize the likelihood of these two tasks falling together. It was an even greater error on my part to fail to realize that this perfect storm was likely to take place in the unfortunately month of March, the month where all exciting curriculum goes to die. The result was predicable - slowed progress, an increase in behavior issues, and all of this had to have a negative impact on the learning of my students. Perhaps this all could have been avoided had I allowed students to self select their curriculum sequence. That might have allowed some students to step away from a piece of content, returning to tackle it at a more beneficial time. Students did resume a better pace after they had fought their way through those two tasks which would seem to indicate that the two tasks and the month of March were largely to blame.
This is another one of those issues that can be looked at through different lenses. A narrowly focused lens would reveal the benefits of presequenced curriculum within each unit of study. This is a bit of a no brainer as the whole idea of a unit of study is for related content to be developed and unified into greater understanding over time. However, a different picture is revealed when using the wide focus lens of unit sequencing over two years. In many cases, the units do not necessarily need to be tackled in a common sequence.
At this point, I am leaning toward opening more of the sequencing decisions to students. I will likely present a curriculum path with optional detours available for students. There is definitely more thinking to be done about this before next fall arrives!
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