Implementing and Assessing
Implementing and Assessing
Step 2: implementing the plan
- Teaching lessons, using strategies and activities.
- Modeling and providing input, and monitoring learner progress.
Step 3: assessing teaching and learning
- Conducting formative and summative assessment.
- Analyzing performance data and determining the level of achievement.
- If performance is low, modify the plan and reteach with different strategies.
Curriculum and teaching
- Curriculum is the outcomes; teaching is the means to reach them.
- They are interdependent, together greater than the sum of their parts.
Planning rehearses the lesson; the next two steps perform it and check the result. This is where the whole of curriculum development finally meets a real classroom and real learners.
Step two: implementing the plan
Curriculum plans are implemented either as parts of a unit or as daily lessons. Implementing the plan involves the live work of teaching:
- Teaching the lessons.
- Using teaching strategies and activities.
- Modeling the work and providing input.
- Monitoring learner progress as it happens.
This is the step everyone pictures when they think of a curriculum, but, as this guide has shown, it rests on everything that came before: the objectives, the sources, the screens, the selected and organized experiences, and the plan.
Step three: assessing teaching and learning
The final step is assessing teaching and learning, which closes the loop back to evaluation. It involves:
- Conducting both formative assessment, during learning, and summative assessment, at the end.
- Analyzing learner performance data.
- Determining the level of achievement.
Assessment is done to find out what learners know about the content and the level of their skills in various tasks. And it feeds directly back into the process: if learners show low performance, the curriculum development process requires modifying the plan and reteaching the concepts with different strategies. This is the cyclical improvement met in the chapter on evaluation, now seen at the level of a single class.
Planning, implementing the plan, and assessing teaching and learning
Planning rehearses the lesson; implementing teaches it; assessing checks the result with formative and summative methods and, if performance is low, loops back to modify and reteach.
Curriculum and teaching are interdependent
A closing clarification ties the whole guide together. The words curriculum and teaching are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same. For many educators, curriculum is all about outcomes, what learners should reach, while teaching is the means to attain those outcomes.
The important point is the relationship between them. Curriculum is not just an end, isolated from teaching as the means. Together, curriculum and teaching create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. They are interdependent, not mutually exclusive. A set of outcomes with no teaching is inert; teaching with no curriculum is aimless. The two need each other.
This is why the process of curriculum development, whether for a particular school, a grade level, or a single class, involves all the basic principles explored across this guide. Defining purposes, studying learners and society, screening objectives, selecting and organizing experiences, evaluating results, and now designing and delivering the curriculum are not separate skills but one connected practice. A curriculum comes to life only when all of them work together.
Interdependent: curriculum is the outcomes, teaching is the means to reach them
They are not the same and not separate. Outcomes with no teaching are inert; teaching with no curriculum is aimless. Together they form a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
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