Final Paper: Curriculum Review

Christina R. Shaffer
ADM 640
Shenandoah University, Fall 2014

FINAL PAPER: CURRICULUM REVIEW

An elementary school curriculum is the foundation for student success. This is the age in
which children are determining how they will view their educational journey. It is at this point in
which those who make the decisions surrounding their academic future need to be aware of the
far-reaching consequences of their current actions. It is not just about one person, one subject, or
one test, but about the whole individual student in his/her quest for academic success.
The answer may lie, in part, in establishing more effective practices. Making sense of
existing information and creating new information are processes situated within
communities of practice that are responsible for defining the norms, criteria, conventions,
and rules of evidence for what counts as credible knowledge and the acceptable and
expected forms of argumentation within specific communities. (Goldman and
Scardamalia, 2013, p. 260)

School Overview
Roosevelt Elementary School is located in a rural, yet swiftly growing, area of Salem
County, Virginia. The school currently enrolls 477 students in preschool through fifth grades and
maintains a staff of 40 teachers. Kindergarten through fifth grades all have four classes each with
one special education inclusion class at every level. The preschool class consists of 7 special
needs students and 2 typical peers. Enrollment at Roosevelt Elementary has stayed consistent for
the last three years, however, a new townhouse development is being built within the zoning area
with an expectation to be ready for habitation prior to next school year.
Within the student population, there are 24 students who access English as a Second
Language (ESL) services, 15 students who access speech services, 28 students with current
Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), and 26% of the families qualify for Free or Reduced

FINAL PAPER: CURRICULUM REVIEW

Lunch (FRL). The teaching staff consists of 15 who hold a Bachelor of Education degree and 25
who hold a Master of Education degree (or corresponding degree to their current field). Thirty
teachers have been teaching for 15 or fewer years while only 9 have 16 or more years of
experience. Roosevelt Elementary is a Title 1 school and did meet state accreditation goals;
however, test scores did noticeably fall last year in mathematics, particularly in the sub-groups
involving the ESL students and minorities.

Current Curriculum and Teaching

The school system has been using the current math series for the last five years. When it
was originally adopted, it was not a unanimous decision. Many concerns were raised regarding
the lack of technology involvement and the quantity of worksheets that it promotes using. Now,
five years into the usage of the series, Roosevelt Elementary has an enforced limit on the number
of copies that each teacher can make per quarter, making this particular series difficult. The
teachers have been searching for more efficient and successful ways to teach the same strategies.
The school does employ a math specialist who has been involved with providing ideas to the
classroom teachers and assisting the students who have IEPs requiring math services.
The scores for Language Arts have consistently gone up for the past three years on the
SOL tests. The Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS) tests that are taken by the
younger grade levels have also shown growth. Roosevelt Elementary changed their Language
Arts block two years ago to incorporate a longer length of time and a variety of strategies. The
school division has allowed each elementary school to decide their own method, or series, to use
during Language Arts and Roosevelt opted to permit each grade level to work based on the needs
of their current students versus a standardized series.

FINAL PAPER: CURRICULUM REVIEW

The materials for history have been a slightly neglected area of study in many of the
grade levels. Roosevelt Elementary is still using the series that the school division adopted seven
years ago. There is a lot of disagreement among the staff regarding the implementation and
continued usage of this series, however, they do not have other resources available. SOL scores
have neither increased nor decreased significantly.
The science series being used at Roosevelt Elementary is a brand new series adopted last
summer for implementation this school year. Most of the teachers have been excited to use the
technology aspects that are included, particularly the access to an on-line text that students are
able to use from home. The hands-on, collaborative experiments that this series provides seem to
be promoting more interest from the students and monthly data from test scores indicate that this
series is a positive implementation.

Evaluating the Curriculum

Step One
As a new administrator to Roosevelt Elementary School, the first step is to decide the
primary stakeholders involved in the success or failure of the curriculum. At Roosevelt, the
philosophy is that all decisions should be for the best interests of the students, thus making them
the main stakeholders in the process. If the curriculum does not meet their learning needs, then it
is not efficient nor effective. The teachers are another stakeholder group in which their opinion
and buy-in of the curriculum is imperative. If they do not believe in what they are being told to
teach, then their lack of enthusiasm will likely carry over into the mindset of the students.
Parents would be the third primary stakeholder group as, presumably, they would want the best
education for their children. Parent-teacher relationships have long been considered both a

FINAL PAPER: CURRICULUM REVIEW

vexing problem and a potential resource for improving students school success (Minke,
Sheridan, Kim, Ryoo, Koziol, 2014, p. 527).

Step Two
A re-evaluation of the current material being used to teach each subject is needed. The
science series appears to be the only one that is current in both content and strategies. The history
series is quite outdated and needs to be enhanced with current material using strategies that make
the information relevant. While the Language Arts strategies seem to be working, since the
students are showing growth, a consistency needs to be found so that the growth continues. With
the drop in scores for math, this seems to be the largest area of concern. A determination needs to
be made as to whether the problem lies within the text series, the strategies being used to teach
the material, a lack of differentiation, and/or some other internal or external factor.

Step Three
As the administrator, a determination now needs to be made in how to make the
necessary changes or updates to what is currently being used. To ensure that the academic level
being taught is completely in the best interests of the students, that the teachers are enthusiastic
and involved with it, and that the parents are confident in the success of the curriculum, the
administration needs to make certain that the means to do so are provided. This can be done in a
variety of ways.
Within the Salem County school division, a new push for STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics) is currently underway. Teachers in kindergarten through fifth
grades are being required to attend a one day professional development to gain insight on

FINAL PAPER: CURRICULUM REVIEW

implementation and usage of STEM in their classrooms. This aligns well with the new science
material and could align well with the mathematics material as well, if the teachers are taught
how to do so. Public elementary education generally has little leeway for additional content
beyond that mandated by state curricula. However, teaching spatial thinking involves teaching
process rather than content and thus can complement existing curriculum requirements (Taylor
and Hutton, 2014, p. 440)
Professional development opportunities need to be meaningful. The curriculum is a
school-wide endeavor for the perspective of all stakeholder groups. Encouraging vertical
meetings to continue professional development across all subject areas allows an opportunity for
each grade level to see possibly where their successes and failures have been and thus what they
need to improve or change in their teaching.
Technology has become a large part of our society. Even if the subject series, or texts,
provided to the school does not include a technology aspect, Roosevelt Elementary should strive
to incorporate technology into their curriculum on a daily basis. Every subject area should be an
area in which students feel comfortable implementing a learning skill in a technological format.
This means that teachers need to be taught how to do so also, such as a professional development
opportunity.

Step Four
To ensure that the curriculum is being successful and growing in that success, the
administrator needs to consistently follow-up with the students, the teachers, and the parents.
This does not mean a one-time, 20-minute walk-through every quarter. Grade levels need to
communicate with one another, help one another, learn from one another, and dialogue with the

FINAL PAPER: CURRICULUM REVIEW

administration about their needs, concerns, successes, and failures. Administrators need to be
aware of what is happening in the classrooms through observations, discussions, student
engagement, lesson plans, and teacher evaluations.
Teachers need to feel ownership of their material so that they do not accidentally pass on
an unintended bias of a subject, whether positive or negative. Students need ownership of the
material to fully understand it and not just pass a test; meaning teachers need to communicate the
material in a way that the students can enjoyably learn it.
Although anticipation is a practice, it requires the teacher to envision how students
would develop different solutions to the task. Thus, the practice of anticipation is
primarily cognitive. As the teacher enacts the task in the classroom, witnessing students
array of responses adds to her knowledge of strategies students might use in the future. In
this framing, then, anticipation is both knowledge and practice. (Dotger and McQuitty,
2014, p. 76).

Conclusion
At Roosevelt Elementary School, the new administrator should make use of the expertise
already within the building. For example, the math specialist could meet with classes as a whole
on a weekly basis to help provide extra services to all students, not just those with IEPs. The subgroups who are dropping in scores on the SOL tests (ESL and minorities) do not necessarily need
to be singled out, but could be part of additional remediation if they seem to need it on an
individual basis and it may be provided by the math specialist, but also the reading specialist or
differentiation specialist.

FINAL PAPER: CURRICULUM REVIEW

Teachers should be held accountable for implementation of the strategies that they are
learning to use with new materials. Sometimes this can be frightening to teachers who have been
using a specific method for years. They need to be given support and encouragement from their
peers and from the administration.
[C]urrent discussions of teacher accountability suggest the need to attend to aspects of
teachers jobs that can be reliably observed and assessed. We argue that the daily
interactions teachers have with students are among the most feasible to include This
orientation does not diminish the importance of other aspects of teachers work but rather
places an emphasis on the importance of interactions as a major part of their daily lives in
the classroom. (Hamre et al., 2013, p. 463)
Parents should be kept up-to-date with current curriculum goals and be given ideas and
strategies that they could use at home. This is especially important for the ESL community so
that they do not feel excluded or different. Parent and teacher perceptions of parent involvement
often differ. Not surprisingly, teachers often emphasize behaviors they can observe, whereas
parents tend to reference home-based supports as well as school-based supports; as a result,
parents tend to see themselves as more involved than do teachers (Minke, Sheridan, Kim, Ryoo,
Kziol, 2014, p. 528). If a balance is found, the best interests of the students is found from the
perspective of the other two stakeholder groups.
The academic success of the students revolves around a successful implementation of the
chosen curriculum. As mentioned, continual review of the material and strategies that are in
place should be used by administration through the parents, teachers, and students. When these
stakeholders work together, success can be found.

FINAL PAPER: CURRICULUM REVIEW

References
Dotger, S. and McQuitty, V. (2014). Describing elementary teachers operative systems: a case
study. The Elementary School Journal, 115(1), 73-96.
Goldman, S.R., and Scardamalia, M. (2013). Managing, understanding, applying, and creating
knowledge in the information age: next-generation challenges and opportunities.
Cognition and Instruction, 31(2), 255-269.
Hamre, B.K., Pianta, R.C., Downer, J.T., DeCoster, J., Mashburn, J., Jones, S.M.Hamagami,
A. (2013). Teaching through interactions: testing a developmental framework of teacher
effectiveness in over 4,000 classrooms. The Elementary School Journal, 113(4), 461-487.
Minke, K.M., Sheridan, S.M., Kim, E.M., Ryoo, J.H., & Koziol, N.A. (2014). Congruence in
parent-teacher relationships: the role of shared perceptions. The Elementary School
Journal, 114(4), 527-546.
Taylor, H.A., & Hutton, A. (2014). Think3d!: training spatial thinking fundamental to STEM
education. Cognition and Instruction, 31(4), 434-455.