Published with permission from Wilkie Way November Newsletter
Curriculum Coverage, Student Learning and being a
Professional Teacher
A sales rep from one of the Maths Resource providers told me that our MOE are more
concerned with coverage than with learning. The policy of delivering the curriculum by
age rather than student learning needs will attest to the message coming loud and
clear. While I agree there must be momentum and students can be exposed to
content beyond their immediate specific learning needs, unless real learning is
happening students will be making very little progress.
Telling parents, they will be able to see their child’s progress by looking at completed
workbooks is a false message and total misuse of “observable data”
Sarah Aioni from Longworth Education said it so well
I repeat her words:
When did covering the curriculum become the
measure of whether children are learning
We can plan a lesson, deliver the content, complete
the activity and tick the box.
But what have the children actually understood?
What questions have they asked?
What connections have they made?
And perhaps most importantly, what opportunities
have they had to do something meaningful with
what they've learned?
There's a difference between children being exposed to knowledge and children
developing an understanding of it.
That doesn't mean knowledge isn't important. Of course it is.
But knowledge becomes far more powerful when children have opportunities to
explore it, question it, connect it to their experiences and use it in different ways
Here's a challenge for your planning this week.
Choose one learning experience you've planned and ask yourself three questions:
1. What do I actually want children to understand?
2. Where is the opportunity for children to contribute their own ideas, questions or
thinking?
3. How will I know they've developed understanding, rather than simply
completed the activity?
Sometimes the most important change we can make to our planning isn't adding
something new. It's reconsidering what we're asking children to do with what we're
already teaching.
Curriculum coverage and meaningful learning are not the same thing.
Since when did following the curriculum mean we were no longer allowed to
question it?
If you believe you are a professional then being a
professional means bringing knowledge, judgement,
experience and critical thinking to the decisions we
make every day.
1. Whose knowledge is being privileged?
2. Whose perspectives are missing?
3. Pertaining to the maths curriculum, what concept
steps are missing or misaligned?
4. How does this content connect with the identities,
cultures and lived experiences of the children we're teaching?
5. What opportunities will children have to explore, question and challenge ideas
rather than simply reproduce them?
6. What happens when our professional understanding of how children learn sits
uncomfortably alongside the expectations we're being asked to implement?
Thoughtful implementation requires more than compliance.
• We can acknowledge that curriculum expectations are mandated while still
examining them critically.
• We can teach prescribed knowledge while creating opportunities for children to
think beyond it.
• We can meet our responsibilities without abandoning our professional
judgement
