Tommy Lu
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tiffanyluSyllabi Considerations
Posted by Tommy Lu on September 24, 2008
Dear teachers:
Thank you all for providing your current syllabi. Now we have syllabi posted on our wiki, I think we can start next step. Pleaset of check and compare the grade you are currently teaching, the grade before and the grade after. For example, if you are teaching grade 4B, please check and compare the syllabi for grade 3B and grade 5B to see if they are aligned.
Thank you all for providing your current syllabi. Now we have syllabi posted on our wiki, I think we can start next step. Pleaset of check and compare the grade you are currently teaching, the grade before and the grade after. For example, if you are teaching grade 4B, please check and compare the syllabi for grade 3B and grade 5B to see if they are aligned.
Please do not make any changes but make a note of the changes you would like to have and either post it on the wiki on the current grade you are teaching or post it on the blog at http://chineseschoolde.wordpress.com
When we have collective information after this practice, we should have a pretty good picture on what kind of changes we would like to make at our next meeting.
When we have collective information after this practice, we should have a pretty good picture on what kind of changes we would like to make at our next meeting.
I noticed that several teachers have posted new information for her classes. That’s great! If you have some successful strategies or stories, please share them also on the wiki or the blog.
In case you have not noticed, there are two new links: Learning Resources and Teaching Material that contain some useful stuff for you to use.
Thanks.
Tommy,
Tommy Lu said
Dear teachers:
I sent out an e-mail last week to ask you to check three syllabi (the grade level prior, current and the next of what you are teaching now) and see if you agree with them in terms of vertical alignment. So far I have not seen any. For track A curriculum, you may think it is less important because our textbooks pretty much determine the curriculum and since we don’t change textbooks that often, the curriculum is OK. Well, I would like you to think about whether our curriculum should be determined by the textbooks. If you think so, then we need to dig deeper on the current textbook content and the curriculum it follows.
For track B classes, our textbook adoption has not been stablized and we need to determine whether our curriculum should follow the textbooks or we should select textbooks based on our curriculum (in this case, we definitely need to define our own curriculum first).
Our record shows that this year we have 52% (65 out of 125) heritage students and 48% (60 out of 125) non-heritage sudents. However, by looking at lower grade level (Pre-K to 1st grade), we have 44% heritage students (21 out of 48) and 56% (27 out of 48) non-heritage students. My sense about non-heritage families is that they don’t mind paying more money if they can receive the service that has a standard. This is different from the heritage families because they think they can always teach their own children without much help from the school. Therefore, track B curriculum development is important and it will serve a vital factor for our school’s success (or survival at least). This is why I think our curriculum development is crucial and I need your help.
Please post your syllabi evaluation on the blog at http://chineseschoolde.wordpress.com so we can keep these evaluations in a central location and can have discussions at any time. I want to finalize the vertical alignment issue this semester so that curriculum revisement (if any) can be done in the spring semester. Your help and understanding of this important issue is highly appreciated.
Tommy,
Tommy Lu said
From Hsiaoju, 1B class teacher:
I found the following syllabi posted are not current:
3A- old version
4A- no syllabus
4B- old and need to be removed because no such class this year
5A- old and should be removed because we do not have this class this year
6A- old version
8A- no syllabus
We also need to create spaces for advanced and adult classes.
Hsiaoju
Tommy Lu said
From Wendy Liu, 3B class teacher:
I think that the old syllabi should not be removed but should be labelled with the school year they were written for. This would probably help the future teachers.
Tommy Lu said
Hi, Hsiaoju:
Thank you for responding. We are not examining syllabi just for this year. We need to check those syllabi even though no classes are offered this year. They might be active next year and we should not wait until next year. The purpose of this evaluation is to see if we have established a vertically aligned curriculum (whether a class is offered or not). For those old syllabus, if they are not suitable, then yes we need to revise them. Hope this answered your concern.
Tommy,
Tommy Lu said
Agree with Wendy and Tommy for keeping all the old syllabi for vertical alignment.
I really have difficulties finding the spot to post this dicussion in blog.
5B is in need of syllabus, too.
Hsiaoju
Tommy Lu said
From principal Tang
I agree with Wendy. We should keep adding our syllbi and in the long run, all the future faculty members can benefit and we can all see how our curriculum transformtion.
Fancia