An Eye Opening Week!

Since I started this program I always knew I wanted to complete the curriculum design project for my Capstone.  My current school district has no real music curriculum.  I remember when I first started my teaching job almost six years ago I was able to speak to the former band director and she explained what she typically taught throughout the year.  Much of what was taught revolved around what performances were coming up in the near future.  I thought it was very odd to not have a curriculum but I thought I would be able to adapt and use what I learned in my student teaching to come up with a plan for what to teach.  I quickly understood what the former director was talking about when she told me she was usually teaching to the performance.  On average my high school band students perform around 30 times each school year.  Between football, competition marching, pep band, concerts, and other various performances we stay extremely busy.  Since starting this masters program I have come to realize how much my students need a well designed and cohesive curriculum that spans from beginning band all the way through high school band.  

In just a few weeks I will be finished with the course work for this program and move on to my Capstone project.  I have thought a great deal about curriculum during each of these courses.  As I am preparing to work on my own curriculum project I found this weeks lecture and reading to be particularly helpful.  For many people, myself included, the word curriculum can be seen as intimidating and overwhelming.  The Backward Design gives a great overview for how to narrow down a particular subject in to what should be taught, how do we know they understand, and how it should be taught.  This is a new concept to me but it is one that I find very intriguing and I plan on researching more about Backward Design.  Bauer does an excellent job of breaking down each of these steps.  Bauer (2014) Figure 7.1, Lesson Planning Using Backward Design, is a great example to see how these steps function together to form a complete lesson (p. 157).  

Another important part of any classroom is finding how to successfully assess student learning.  As I have stated before in previous blog posts finding ways to assess my band students in a timely and efficient manner is a real struggle in my classroom.  Bauer (2014) includes several important criteria for assessment (p. 132-133).  It is easy to wrapped up in the busy performance schedules and the everyday hustle and bustle and forget about how important it is for students to be assessed on a regular basis.  While reading this weeks assignment it was helpful to be reminded of how truly important assessment is. Figures 6.1-6.3 provided some great scoring systems I plan on using in the future.

Overall, this week was extremely helpful in preparing me not only for my upcoming Capstone project but also showing me of how I can improve my current teaching style.  I truly enjoyed the Bauer reading this week.