Students in kindergarten through second grade at Newton-Conover City Schools are already being taught differently than students in those grades last year. By this time next year, students throughout the system will have a brand new curriculum taught to them under state standards.
As part of the state’s participation in the federal program Race to the Top — which brings with it some federal money — North Carolina must revamping its curriculum, said David Stegall, associate superintendent for Newton-Conover City Schools.
The state adopted federal standards for reading and math, but was allowed to have more state-specific materials for the rest of the core subjects, Stegall said.
Under the new “common core of standards,” as it is called, the curriculum is not laid out for the teachers, telling them what should and should not be taught and how to teach it.
“The common core focuses on broad, key issues, but doesn’t tell teachers how to do it,” he said. “It is up to teachers to develop the pedagogy.”
For some teachers, this will prove to be no problem. For others, this may be difficult.
“We have five days of professional development for our teachers this year. We’ll have sample documents that teachers in a department can share,” Stegall said. “On student performance data, we can see a teacher who may need extra support. They can observe another teacher if they need to. We have shared capacity meetings. We also have quarterly assessments to see what’s working for us.”
Under the new common core, students will also learn different things in their subjects. In English and language arts, they will focus on reading, writing, literacy and speaking and listening. However, those skills will carry over into other subjects, Stegall said.
“There will be a lot more informational texts, like the Bill of Rights. They’ll learn how it was impacted, why it was worded that way,” he said. “They’ll have to defend their explanations in writing.”
He said science teachers will also have reading and vocabulary integrated into their subjects, as well.
In math, students will discuss how they came up with their answers and if there was another solution if someone else came up with the answer a different way. Students will also apply math to real-world situations.
Social studies will see some of the largest changes, because students will no longer study one continent in one grade. Sixth-graders will learn about South America, Europe and the beginnings of human society through the first Global Age, at about 1450. Seventh-graders will study Africa, Asia and Australia, learning about the Great Global Convergence from 1400 to 1800. Eighth-graders will learn study state history and the US.
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