Curriculum considerations for different learners
Our school children in our local schools are exposed and taught with an abstract, ideal and intended curriculum by our local ministry of education to equip them with knowledge and life skills to cope with future skills and jobs that may not even exist in this era.
A motivational Story of curriculum making
I have recently read an old newspaper article about a story of a foreign student from Bangladesh who faced difficulty in using English. He did overcome his difficulty later on.
During his teenage years, he made friends with foreign workers who had difficulty in communication in English. Since these foreign workers were weak in English, they had difficulty understanding the instruction as well as safety briefing at their workplace.
There was one incident that impacted him visited a foreign worker at a hospital. This foreign worker had his hand amputated due to an injury when he tried to stop a leak using his bare hand while fixing an air-conditioner.
Even though this foreign worker was warned during safety briefing but he was not able to understand it in English.
He decided to develop a curriculum to help these foreign workers to understand English that they needed to cope with workplace requirement. He had to interview workers and managers from construction, shipping and manufacturing industries to find out what were the common communication problem at their workplace for foreign workers.
With this information, he was able to develop a curriculum to teach these foreign workers English to cope with their work. His commitment in his social responsibility did hit on his studies since he was still a student but he found satisfaction in helping these foreigner workers to learn English.
What is important?
I shared this story is to highlight one key consideration that teachers should be aware of.
What is the most valued knowledge or ability that we can bring the most worth to our pupils’ individual needs?
Different learners require different learning needs.
Can our intended curriculum cater to every child’s ability and needs?
The fact is that we may want a child to achieve a certain target or learning objective but not everyone learns the same way and speed.
Imagine if you want your school children to reach a certain destination on their own tomorrow.
Some children may only be able to use a bicycle while others can afford to have a cab to get them to the destination. The ones who use a bicycle may take a longer time to reach the destination and they may use more effort actually.
As teachers, we may get a fixed curriculum but we should be the one to design our lessons to cater to the different ability groups in our classroom.
Different children have different curriculum needs. Just like the foreign workers, they may not need to know all the grammar rules but they do need to know and understand the workplace vocabulary that enable them to work more effectively and safely at their workplace.
Many of us are guilty of trying to teach the same way for every class and every pupil.
It is a time to reflect what we can do better to redesign our intended curriculum and learning outcomes to ensure every child benefit in our classroom.
Every child can learn but not everyone learns the same way. We can make a difference if we are able to redesign and customise to different cohort of pupils we may have each year.
The fact is not every child can become a doctor or professor in future, some may find success just by being a baker or chef.
Their learning needs can be very different so we should enable each child to learn what they are able to that leads them to future workplace knowledge and capability to adapt and find success in whatever they do or their gifts bring them to.
Every child is a learner but not every child is gifted the same way and learn the same way indeed.
Disclaimer: This is my personal reflection and I am not in any position to instruct anyone what they should do. I am not responsible for any action taken as a result of this post. My post can only be a reference for your further research and growth. By reading this post, you acknowledge and accept that. All images and pictures were taken from google images that are free from copyright under labelled for reuse.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://fun2learn.vornix.blog/2018/07/14/curriculum-considerations-for-different-learners/
What a good post brother, very long post, how are you anyway, see you again soon
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