Collection Development and Management Project click the above link to access the artifact Reflection This curriculum mapping project was created in TE871: Collection Development and Management. I chose 8th grade Language Arts as my area of concentration, as I co-teach the Language Arts classes every year in my current position, I love to read (and love to encourage others to read), and collaborate well with the teachers in the Language Arts classes.
The curriculum that I assessed is lacking in the area of writing curriculum, which is a large piece of the 8th grade curriculum due to state testing. With no writing curriculum in place for either classroom use or library access, it is difficult to prepare the students to where they need to be for the 8th grade assessment. Students are exposed to great writing throughout the curriculum, but if the are not given the tools to write well themselves, they will not learn the skills they need to learn to be successful on the test, nor later in life. Neither the textbook nor the library provides supplementary items on how to teach struggling learners how to write, nor is it addressed well for reading either. Since I completed this curriculum mapping project, I have had the opportunity to attend (by my own choice) a day long, paid, instructional seminar called "Step up to Writing." Although I have not used it in my 8th grade classrooms, I have co-taught the system in the 5th grade classroom. The students responded well to the program. The program is a bit elementary, as it uses color coded writing in order to make sure that the students are using each part of the writing step. Older students may feel it is beneath them to use such a system, but I would like to at least try it with some of my resource students who struggle to see if it helps them grasp the process more concretely than just an outline or graphic organizer.
This artifact reflects modeling and promotion of ethical information seeking behaviors (3.1), a knowledge of a variety of information sources (3.2), demonstrate a variety of research strategies (3.3, 3.4). This artifact also represents a promotion of reading (2..2, 2.4) as the curriculum map addresses wether or not there are reading materials for all levels of readers, as well as materials for special education students as well as ESL and ELL students. Standard 5.1 Collection is represented by the assessment of the Language Arts Curriculum and the resources that are available a well as 5.3 Personnel, Funding and Facilities in the fact that budget and future planning were taken into account.