Respond to this post. 250 words. 2 apa citations This course has probably been one of the top three most difficult courses for me in the masters program. I believe that is the case because it not

Respond to this post. 250 words. 2 apa citations 

This course has probably been one of the top three most difficult courses for me in the masters program.  I believe that is the case because it not how my school district curriculum department designs instruction and it is not how schools require teachers to complete their lesson plans.  I can only imagine what teachers in my district would do if they had to go through a unit design like ours…..it would not be good because of the amount of time required to do it correctly. I am not saying that what my district is doing is wrong or way off base, but I believe they are so tied to the Florida Standards and state testing that they complete pacing guides and unit overviews and then the teachers use those to develop their weekly lesson plans.  Six years ago, when our district adopted a new reading textbook for elementary schools, I spent three weeks with the curriculum department to develop the units of instruction to go with the textbooks.  I found that they followed the prescribed and scripted lessons that came with those textbooks.  There was no development of assessments or rubrics and they used exactly what was purchased with the textbooks.  Since that time, I realized how that was not best practice and using the textbook in the order it was written was not best practice for ensuring that I was meeting the Florida standards.  In addition, the rigor of the text was also not at the level it needed to be to make sure my students were able to read and comprehend grade level text for state testing. 

I see the value in knowing how to effectively complete instructional design and understanding the steps in the process however I would think that it would have to be someone’s full time job to complete for classroom teachers (Gagné, Wager, Golas, & Keller, 2005). As a classroom teacher I get one 50-minute planning period a day plus 25 minutes of planning prior to the start of the day.  There is just not enough time in the day for classroom teachers to complete all their other duties and responsibilities plus design instruction at the depth that we have in this class.

This has been a valuable class for me, and I am grateful for the lessons I have learned over the past eight weeks.

Danielle

Reference

Gagné, R. M., Wager, W. W., Golas, K. C., & Keller, J. M. (2005). Principles of instructional design (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.