Science Era Guide Essay

What are the purposes and content of the curriculum? When considering whether the science-pacing guide is training centered or education centered I had to first dive into what the focus for each unit in the pacing guide was focused on. Was the content more specific to certain skills and knowledge students should obtain or was it more broad overreaching topics? Posner (2004) states that “training refers to contexts in which we can predict with some confidence that specific situations in which people will use what they learn” where as he states that education, “refers to contexts in which we cannot predict with any specificity or certainty the situations in which people will use what they learn” (p.70). This science-pacing guide is very much more education focused than training focused when looking at the context of the curriculum guide. Each unit included in the guide is based off a big idea and crosscutting concepts. These concepts are very broad and not specific what so ever. An example of this would be the big idea for unit 4 in the Kindergarten pacing guide. It says, “patterns in the

These learning goals are based on the state standards students need to meet by the end of the year. The learning goals are reflected on what they are supposed to do within each unit as well as what is expected of them to know from the standards. The learning goals can be found on the left column of the unit layout, as well as in a link labeled “Science performance task.” These performance tasks break down the learning goals into more specific parts where the teacher can easily see what standards they are developed from. My district focus when creating these learning goals comes from Marzano taxonomy. For example in unit one of the learning goals says, “Identify real-world problems and design solutions” (p.78). The learning goal uses the verb “identify” which would fall under Marzano’s Retrieval