Fullfilling the Promise, Chapters 5 & 6

Chapter 5-Curriculum and Instruction as the Vehicle for Addressing Student Needs
What I liked from chapter 5:

• "As teachers, we teach. We are charged by society to ensure that students develop knowledge, understanding, and skill necessary to be fulfilled and productive members of society."
• "She taught Algebra, but she did not teach me."
• "Once we know what is genuinely significant in a topic of study, our next job as teachers...to guide students toward a high level of competence with the knowledge, understanding, and skill we have deemed critical."
• Curriculum and Instruction that are demanding helps students to work harder and become proud of what they are able to accomplish.

Chapter 6-Curriculum and Instruction as the Vehicle for Responding to Student Needs: Rationale to Practice

What I liked from Chapter 6:

• "Creating ties in the classroom builds student confidence..."
• "Curriculum and instruction are important, focused, engaging, demanding, and scaffold to maximize the likelihood that each student is well served in the classroom."
• "Focus student products around significant problems and issues."
• "Use meaningful audiences."
• "Help students discover how ideas and skills are useful in the world."

Applying it all to me:

**These two chapters were very interesting and fun to read. While reading these two chapters I thought how important it is not only to know your curriculum, but also know the best ways to teach your curriculum to meet the needs of your students. To show how important this is I have an example. When I graduated from high school, the following fall I started college at UVU. I took a Math class, which I loved. You don't hear much about teachers in college meeting the needs of their students, but this math teacher did. He was able to teach math to me at my level. He brought objects to demonstrate certain concepts, he made sure everyone was understanding before moving on, etc. Needless to say his teaching math in this way helped me to understand concepts I never understood before. The following semester, I took another math class. This math class was the typical college professor. He came to class wrote how to do things on the whiteboard and that was it. This teacher taught math, but not me. I ended up not passing the class and having to take it over again. I still wonder what would of happened if he taught like my first math teacher.