III. Lesson Planning and Curriculum

What’s a State Learning Standard?

The State Education Department — with a lot of input from teachers — specifies the essential things that students should know and about which they will be tested. There are standards for the arts, English language arts, math, science and social studies.

That may sound pretty abstract, but it ends up being pretty logical. Let’s take an example from science. Standard 4 (at www.nyiteez.org/MarcoPoloNY/NYSS_Science.php), states: “Students will understand and apply scientific concepts, principles, and theories pertaining to the physical setting and living environment and recognize the historical development of ideas in science.”

Below this the state lists 12 key ideas that you should cover to flesh out this concept, one of which is: “Energy and matter interact through forces that result in changes in motion.”
To assist you in doing that, the site provides appropriate lessons. To find them, click on one of the three buttons at the right of the Web page for your grade level.

Here are three experiments that demonstrate that key idea by way of a performance indicator:

Elementary school: To demonstrate that they understand the performance indicator that “students describe how forces can act from a distance,” a lesson explores what happens when students add layers of masking tape to a magnet, thereby diminishing its ability to pick up paper clips.
Middle school: Same key idea, but a different performance indicator: “Students observe, describe, and compare effects of forces (gravity, electric current and magnetism) on the motion of objects.” In one of several lesson plans, “students refine and expand their understandings of gravity, forces and motion in the context of satellite orbits.”
High School: Same key idea, but again a different performance indicator: “Students compare energy relationships within an atom’s nucleus to those outside the nucleus.” Here the lesson plan, focusing on the Curies’ involvement in splitting the atom, states: “The purpose of this lesson… is to use the Internet to research the history of the splitting of the atom and to use that research to make a presentation on an aspect of that topic. The focus of the ‘splitting-the-atom’ story should be on the discovery of nuclear fission and its impact on world affairs. It is important not to overlook the science in this episode when considering the ethical and national-security considerations associated with fission and fusion…”

New York State Curriculum

The state learning standards are tied into the State Education Department’s Core Curriculum, which is reflected in what the city Department of Education requires.

The state Board of Regents adopted the mathematics curriculum in the spring of 2005. The board adopted the rest of the curriculum in 1996.

The Core Curriculum is on line at http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/cores.htm. There you will find links to the curricula for:

The Arts
Career Development & Occupational Studies
English Language Arts
Family & Consumer Sciences
Health Education
Languages Other Than English
Mathematics
Science
Social Studies

The state posts curriculum resources at http://usny.nysed.gov/parents/curriculum.html. Here are the guides you’ll find there:

Arts Resource Guide
Career Development and Occupational Studies Resource Guide
English Language Arts Resource Guide with Core Curriculum
Gifted and Talented Curricula
Health, Physical Education, Family and Consumer Sciences Resource Guide
Languages Other Than English Resource Guide
Mathematics Resource Guide with Core Curriculum
Science Resource Guide with Core Curriculum
Social Studies Resource Guide with Core Curriculum
Technology Education Content Outlines

Essential Web Resources

When you’re looking for resources and tools to plan your lessons, there are two essential Web sites that you should visit.

They will ensure your teaching aligns with both the New York State learning standards and the New York City math and literacy programs.

That’s critically important, because your students will take tests based on the state standards — and your principal will evaluate your performance partly on how well your lessons reflect what the city and state expect you to be teaching.

Here are the two essential sites:

MarcoPoloNY at http://www.nyiteez.org/MarcoPoloNY is a treasure trove that should you should bookmark in your Web browser. It presents:

– The state learning standards, along with performance indicators for different grade levels.
– Thousands of peer-reviewed, officially approved lesson plans in the arts (dance, music, theater and visual arts), English language arts (ELA), math, science and social studies.

This is the New York State-aligned site that belongs to the nationwide MarcoPolo effort by some of the country’s leading professional and teaching organizations.

They include: the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Reading Association, the Kennedy Center, the National Council of Teachers of Math, the National Council on Economic Education, the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Geographic Society. The Verizon Foundation is the lead sponsor.

– The New York State Teacher Center Network, to which the UFT Teacher Center belongs, not only helped vet these lesson plans, but also trains city teachers in how to use the MarcoPolo system.
– You can sign up for free Marcograms, which are e-newsletters on a variety of topics that can enrich your teaching.
– New York City principals have been briefed about MarcoPoloNY. They received copies of a DVD explaining the site, along with a letter from the director of the UFT Teacher Center, so they should be familiar with its store of resources.

The New York City Department of Education Web site at http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/TeachLearn/OCPD/default.htm At the left of this page you will find buttons and drop-down menus reflecting what DOE wants you to know about essential facets of the educational program that it expects you to follow. These include:

– Specifics on DOE’s literacy and math programs, as well as its science, social studies, fitness and physical education programs, and more.
– For example, click the literacy button and you’ll find an explanation of the “balanced literacy” program that DOE adopted. One link is to a discussion of the activities that balanced literacy teachers usually follow, including daily time for read-alouds, independent reading, writing and phonemic awareness – all with explanations.
– Some of the links at the left of the page lead to lesson plans and curricula, others to resources, others to professional development opportunities.

Other Web Resources

As a teacher striving to master quality practice as well as subject matter, you may want to read up on a topic for “deep background,” even though you may not choose to use specific lesson plans that you find online.

Here’s a quick look at a few sites that can provide you with a great deal of information, professional knowledge, resources and opportunities for networking.

General

The National Endowment for the Humanities presents an array of resources and lesson plans that span the grades and cover art and culture, language and language arts, foreign languages, history and social studies at http://www.neh.gov. Among the lesson plans are many that are New York-approved, including these three:

– “Can You Haiku?” for all ages, in which students learn the rules and conventions of haiku, study examples by Japanese masters, and create haiku of their own. – “Aesop and Ananse: Animal Fables and Trickster Tales,” for grades K-2, where students will become familiar with tales from different cultural traditions and will see how stories change when transferred orally between generations and cultures. – “African-American Communities in the North before the Civil War,” for grades 6-8, explores the history of African-Americans after the Revolution.

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