Claire recently said that we need a Scope and Sequence and not a curriculum. But I can’t find the comment. It was two days ago. If anybody can find it I would appreciate it.
The reason I bring it up is because, when I asked Diana Noonan, WL Coordinator and Curriculum Specialist for the Denver Public Schools what to tell Keri and jen, who have those curriculum docs due in early June, she echoed what Claire said:
“We (DPS) don’t necessarily have a curriculum but we do have a Scope and Sequence based on the top 100-200 vocabulary structures. I will post this paragraph. There is so much wisdom in this and I am STILL learning. Going sans formal curriculum and with a S and S makes so much sense and is what we are slowly figuring out in our own way on the blog. We should have just listened to you first. This paragraph here is just huge for where we are on the blog in terms of creating docs. Base a S and S on high frequency and put the rest of the curriculum discussion down. So simple! What is essential to understand is that we don’t just pull obscure non-high-frequency structures out of a hat because we want our students to acquire the language that is the most useful to them when understanding and communicating. And that there exists a “list of high-frequency” structures necessary for basic communication.
“The underlying principle is that using all forms of the verb structures, i.e. ‘natural language’ is super important. Here is what is says in our S&S…on all pages: Vocabulary and Structures — Use present, past, future, and conditional tenses with a variety of subjects.”
Just for the record, this is Keri’s original question a few days ago that Diana was responding to:
…I am going to be writing curriculum in a couple weeks and, this year, I’ve come to the realization of how we don’t really need a curriculum. As it’s been said on the PLC, the stories are our curriculum. It’s a question of “What story am I on” rather than “which verb tense” since all different verb tenses come up at any given time. If anyone has any advice on how I can support this and explain this to the other “non TPRS” teachers, I’d greatly appreciate it….