No curriculum will meet all of your current students learning needs. And what you found successful last year may not be successful this year. The core curriculum for any subject should be reaching 80% of your students. Changes should be made to increase student retention of intended outcomes, when less than 80% of your students are not retaining intended outcomes of core curriculum. There are usually different variables of an instructional lesson that may have a negative or positive effect on the core curriculum.
One tricky part of education and the effectiveness of instructional lessons is the background knowledge that both the teacher and the student bring to the lesson. Each person has had a different set of experiences and exposures before entering the classroom. Teachers can glean from their 13 years of formal-required education. Educators also bring their collegiate educational experiences, and their natural temperament and abilities into the planning and delivering of instructional lessons. In addition, teachers should be seeking ways to improve how to best meet the needs of their current students. This is why professional development is so vital to the process. Professional development may be gained through many different platforms, such as: (a) observation of instructional lessons, (b) self-study, (c) collaboration/discussions with colleagues or community members, (d) college classes or seminars, and or (e) trial and error. Most educators will seek to improve their craft on their own.
In relation to the K-12 students, each are unique individuals that usually require different types of instruction to really grasp and gain ownership of a taught skill. To meet 80% of your current students’ instructional needs in the classroom does not require that each student have a personal instructional plan. But this does mean that written and published instructional lessons may need some differentiation to meet the learning needs of your current students. If you know that most students learn better by taking notes, then taking notes of important details should be added to a lesson. If you know that most of your students need a few more mini lessons to digest and own a skill, then this change should be made. Written and published instructional lessons usually follow a systemic pattern, like teaching students letter names and sounds before asking them to decode CVC words. If students do not own letter-sound correspondences before teaching them how to decode words, most students will struggle and the decoding lesson will usually take many months to grasp. Some skills may be introduced and practiced as new skills are being taught, which may make the art and science of each instructional lesson a challenge. Educator professional development and background knowledge usually increase the ease of developing each instructional lesson to best meet the needs of students in your classroom.
A note of importance, usually only 5% of students on average will be able to grasp, hold onto, and use a new skill after the first lesson. If you do not have the definition of an average classroom, then students taking ownership after the first lesson will be different. Student ability changes with each subject, meaning that some students may be able to learn new skills in reading easier than they can in science. Data gathered today may not look the same tomorrow. Calculating the 80% should include multiple points of gathered data.
