Education is the road to success, and I believe that it is the educator’s responsibility to provide students with a variety of opportunities to develop the fundamental skills vital to success. I also believe that a student-centered learning environment that is safe, supportive, and caring encourages the development of these critical skills. Additionally, I believe curriculum/standards, instruction, and assessments are tools aiding the educator in helping students reach their greatest potential. Thus, if learning is the road to educational success, then curriculum and standards are the backbones to support learning. Curriculum/standards along with assessment and instruction form an educational triangle that generates a check and balance between learning expectations, instructional content, and assessment measures. For any element of the triangle to be effective, all must be tightly aligned and working in a coordinated effort; therefore, curriculum which reflects and provides a model of progression in learning is foundational for instruction and assessment. Insight into learning is gained from assessments that are ongoing (formative) as well as summative and when tightly aligned with curriculum …show more content…
Teachers use curriculum goals and objectives as a roadmap to design classroom instruction; while students use clearly stated goals and objectives to identify what they need to know, how they will demonstrate this knowledge, and under what conditions this knowledge will be demonstrated. Thus, clearly stated objectives keep teacher and students focused on vital information instead of nice to know information. In addition, goals and objectives are used to design classroom assessments which reflect what students are really being taught. In this way, feedback is useful in identifying knowledge gaps and misinformation enabling modification of instruction and