Online Class: First Grade Curriculum

Revolutionizing Modern Education: Transitioning to Interactive Learning

Gone are the days when education was confined to monotone lectures and heavy textbooks reminiscent of the 19th and 20th centuries. The educational landscape has witnessed a profound shift, leaving behind the passive learning models of yesteryears. We've come to understand the limitations of traditional teaching methodologies that often overlook the diverse learning needs of our students.

Modern research solidly advocates for an immersive, holistic approach to education—one that actively engages students, prompting them to think critically, collaborate, and share diverse perspectives. This dynamic method not only captures their fervent energy but also ignites the flames of deep comprehension and curiosity.

Our meticulously crafted course aims to equip educators with the tools and techniques to seamlessly transition into this vibrant paradigm of teaching and learning. Drawing insights from cutting-edge research on brain science and cognitive behavior, we unfold the strategies that emphasize active participation over passive memorization and one-dimensional instruction.

In response to the commitment by forty-eight states to unify educational excellence, our course is intricately designed around the core standards endorsed nationally. These encompass eight pivotal subjects, namely: Reading, Writing, Math, Science, Social Studies, Art, Music and Movement, and Creative Dramatics.

Dive deep into each domain as we delve into the quintessential curriculum components for first graders. Beyond just theoretical knowledge, each lesson is enriched with age-tailored activities that solidify foundational concepts. Additionally, seasoned educators lend their expertise, sharing invaluable teaching nuggets that promise to transform each classroom session into a lively hub of learning and discovery.

Embrace this transformative journey and herald a new era of interactive education that resonates with the ever-evolving needs of our students.

Courses Frequently Bought Together:

How To Be a Substitute Teacher

Understanding Learning Styles

Solving Classroom Discipline Problems

Course Motivation

In the United States, there is no specific national school curriculum. Many states don't develop their own particular curriculum, but rather adopt standards of knowledge that students are expected to master.

The national push for testing provides some specific targets, but those tests don't kick in until the third grade. Additionally, states are now being allowed to opt out of No Child Left Behind testing. Either way, for first graders, reference to any national tests to guide curriculum is of little use.

In recent decades there has been some general agreement on the kinds of information students in different years and different subjects should be learning. Various professional teaching organizations have worked to knit together some guidelines on substance. One goal is to provide continuity; more research is showing that effective learning builds on prior knowledge. It would help if a second grade teacher might have comfort knowing the basic level of knowledge earned by the class in the prior year.

Forty-eight states have signed onto the concept of core standards. Built under the auspices of the Core Knowledge Foundation, an attempt has been made to collect and distill recommendations by grade and subject. This outline will draw significantly from those standards, which may represent the closest thing we have to national agreement on curriculum for first graders. Teachers should always consult their specific state and school districts for any local requirements.

It may be frustrating to teachers or parents that there is no one written curriculum to pull out and start work from; but educators point out that anything too rigid would not allow flexibility for different teaching styles and student learning styles.

The view of schooling is no longer the textbook-based, one-sided lecture method of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries. Education theory has shifted dramatically in recent decades. The passive learning styles of our past are now understood to be poor methods of teaching that ignore the learning needs of children.

Research soundly shows that a holistic, interactive style of teaching, that encourages a student to think and reflect, experiment and share ideas is a far superior way to harness their energy and minds. In the popular guidebook, Best Practice: Today's Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools, the authors note: "Children's urge to make sense of their world propels their own learning."

In the Best Practices book, the authors identify key concepts and techniques to help teachers transition to this new way of approaching teaching -- different than most U.S. adults experienced as children. Drawing on what research now tells us about the brain and how people learn, they urge a focus on more active learning, and less lecturing, less, passive instruction, and less fill-in-the-blank worksheets.

Underlying this shift is a focus on what is called "authentic" learning. In the past, we've had a tendency to oversimplify subjects taught to young children. In addition, curriculum focus has often been a superficial race to cover a wide swath of subjects, without going very deep.

This brings up the national political arguments over "teaching to the test" at the expense of real knowledge. Attempting to put politics aside, one standards group acknowledged that tests can serve a purpose of testing levels of knowledge - however, this type of timed, pressure, written testing can only measure a small part of a student's actual knowledge.

Authentic Learning- New research on how people learn and how the brain works has led to the focus on "authentic learning." Two points are important to know about how this works:

(1) Students construct knowledge

Students learn best not simply from direct telling and teaching. This is a difficult concept to let go of, since many of us were educated that way. Constructive teaching is an understanding that students don't just simply memorize information that they are told. They internalize and reconstruct that knowledge. Learning, therefore, is really an internal process. The new goal for teachers is not to lecture from the front of the classroom, but to create an environment for students to construct their own understanding.

(2) Students connect what they learn to their own lives

Lecturing is one-way conferring of knowledge. Teachers need to allow students to analyze, think, experiment, share ideas, and reflect.

Shift away from segmentation - Part of the importance of including interactive learning time, is to allow students to share with each other their own techniques and solutions to problems. Instead of segmenting off the "talented" kids and the "slow" kids, let them work in groups and learn from each other.

Children grow in common patterns, but at different rates. Kids may arrive at the same level of knowledge, but at different speeds and by different methods. These differences in abilities and approaches are no longer seen as grounds for splitting up children into categories.

Role of technology - The explosion of computers in the classroom, handheld devices and the Internet have radically changed learning opportunities. One expert^[1] suggests that the Internet and technology has made learning both easier and harder:

1. On one hand, students now have access at their fingertips to huge amounts of information that not too long ago would have required hours in a dusty library to track down. However, it is difficult to learn how to sift through all the raw data to find what's meaningful.

2. Media advances can help get students more engaged in learning; but the ever-presence of mind-blowing images is resulting in students who have less patience.

In math and the sciences, the presence of technology - once feared - is now seen as an enhancement to facilitate learning. Instead of worrying that students will rely on calculators and not learn formulas, the new thinking is that using technology to perform those calculations will free up time to learn and understand the concepts more deeply.

What we might think of as "general intelligence" develops with age, and can be influenced by the environment. A person's IQ at birth predicts no more than 20% of IQ at maturity. Teaching, therefore, can make a tremendous impact.

Educators stress there is no one right way to teach. However, there is agreement in the shift from passive one-way lecturing, to interactive teaching.

Build on prior knowledge- Students learn by connecting the new ideas being taught to their prior body of knowledge. Teachers should first make an attempt to assess their students' knowledge levels. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics stresses the importance of understanding the level of students' existing knowledge. (Curriculum reform efforts also strive to keep continuity throughout school for the ideal learning process.)

Teachers should then design lessons targeted to build on the current level of knowledge.

When presenting new ideas, a teacher can help students make connections to what they know already, through use of metaphors, analogies, and graphs. Teachers can also help students to see their own relationship to the materials, where appropriate.

Pay attention to student interests - Where possible, teachers should design lessons around student interests. It is believed that a large part of the problem when teachers find students not interested in learning, is really that the students aren't interested in the lesson being taught.

There are some approaches to develop lessons that engage students:

• Personalize learning - listen to students own ideas
• Relate lessons to students' lives
• Make lessons novel and capture students' curiosity

Students at this age will likely enjoy team projects. However, the teacher needs to be prepared that students at this age will also be active and noisy in the classroom.

Use of Technology - Technology shouldn't replace a basic understanding of math and science concepts, but properly used, technology can in fact support deeper investigation of the principles being taught. The existence of technology to perform some of the functions that one time were a large focus of the curriculum now allows a re-examination of what students should/could be learning instead.

One skill teachers can impart on their students is the critical ability to know when to rely on calculators and computers, when to work out problems by hand, and when to work them out in their head. The various pros and cons of each approach can be reviewed, along with means to check their validity.

Importance of Assessment

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has done some importance synthesis on new thinking about testing. These assessment principles can be used in all subjects. Especially in math, they may be particularly interesting to those who might have thought written tests were the best way to gauge math knowledge.

The new approach emphasizes that tests don't have to be something done to students, and can be something done for students. This involves two key shifts in thinking from what most of us experienced in school:

(1) Assessing levels of knowledge

To be sure, tests can serve as a measure of knowledge. But there is new awareness that formal testing only presents one view of a student's "knowledge," that is, the knowledge that a student can express in written form, under limited timing of testing conditions.

As an addition to written, timed testing, other methods of assessment can bring a fuller picture of the child's understanding. These can include individual interviews, observation, questions.

(2) Mid-learning evaluations

Another use of testing can be to measure a student's learning at periodic points throughout the year. Such assessments throughout the learning process can help teachers see how children have understood the material, and make any needed corrections. In this way, testing can be used to enhance learning, and not just as a narrow assessment of what has been learned, after the fact.