Chapter 5a, 5b, & 5c: The Curriculum

5a
After taking a little bit closer of a look at curriculum as a whole I can only hope that for at least my first year of teaching I am lucky enough to be able to work in a team of teachers. Thus far in my college career I have worked hands on with the individual lesson plans and even a couple different unit plans, but I have not yet had to deal with the whole curriculum of a school. I think that eventually it will be helpful and more challenging in the long run. It will be a helpful starting point for each lesson plan in order to have a focus. Now we are just pulling things out of nowhere. However, I think that having to deal with sticking to a curriculum will be difficult in situations where I don't necessarily agree with the content that is focused on. This portion of the chapter also discusses curriculum as not only being the academic portion of school, but also the activities, programs of service, and hidden learning experiences as well. I think that this is an important way to look at curriculum because students learn from many different facets in their life, not only from the lessons they are being taught from their textbooks.

5b
Before reading this section of the chapter I always looked at textbooks as a way to move you through the school year. For each subject or class you have one or possibly two textbooks and that is where you go your information. When I was going through school we were just starting to use the internet more often and we used encyclopedias or whatever our school library had to offer for books. Especially in a middle school classroom I think that it is important to use all different kinds of sources to pull your information from. You want to keep your information current and up to date. Up until reading this portion of the chapter I didn't really realize or think about how often one text is used for a course and absolutely nothing else. I don't think this benefits students in any way. This section also talks about writing goals and objectives. In order to do this you need to have a clear idea of what you want your students to get out of the lesson. It also talks about different controversies or controversial topics in the classroom. Particularly in a middle school classroom I think this could be a potential issue quite often. Students are always asking questions about anything and everything. Most of the time it is out of genuine curiosity but with some topics  we as educators need to be very careful how we proceed in answering questions about touchy subjects. I also don't believe that it is our place to answer every question that is asked either. I think that there are some topics that should be left up to parental discretion. I thought it was interesting how the book said it was ok to tell your students your opinion but it is best to wait until after they have explored the topic. I found this to be so interesting because I can't remember a teacher until my college career that ever gave their opinion on anything. Even now some professors won't give you their input.

5c
We have talked about Bloom's taxonomy in many of the previous courses that I have taken. It relates to the cognitive domain and higher levels of thinking. I had personally never heard of the taxonomies related to the affective or psychomotor domains. It is interesting to think about emotions and values, and  psychomotor skills on different levels. When I think about teaching the very first thing that comes to mind is having student learn the "textbook" or academic information, but in the classroom students learn much more than academics. I think that in middle school especially the teaching of how to deal with emotions and their values is very important. Middle school is when students are trying to find themselves and it is important that students have the proper models and guidance. The last section also talks about integrated curriculum. From my experience in creating a thematic unit, this concept is very tricky to me. The task of having to center all subject areas around one common theme or topic is most definitely a challenge. Syllabi are also covered in this section. When I think about a syllabus I normally think about the 20 page long documents that we get in our college courses. However, I think that the shortened, easy to read documents described in the chapter would be very beneficial in a middle school classroom to help parents and students see what direction you are planning on going throughout the school year. I think they can be beneficial to planning your year as well. If you can't explain to your students and their parents where you want to end up or where you are going then maybe you need just a little more planning time.