CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK - Rochester City School ….doc

ROCHESTER CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT ELEMENTARY SCIENCE CURRICULUM GRADE 4  Notes to the Teacher This document was based on New York State Core Curriculum K-4 Elementary Science and designed for teachers to use in their development of lessons for standards focused instruction. Collaboration in lesson design, instructional delivery, assessment development, and resource application is strongly encouraged across and through the grade levels to establish collegiality, consistency, and continuity. In a standards-based educational system lesson development should begin with the content and skills (major understandings and performance Objectives) and integrated with assessment. This framework should be used to articulate the design and activities of the lesson. This document should be used to design standards focused instruction that would increase students’ understanding and skills in science as well as improve student preparation and performance on state assessments. CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK This curriculum should be used as a lesson planning guide/instructional design for teachers. The Key Ideas The key ideas are broad, unifying, general statements that represent knowledge within a domain. They represent a thematic or conceptual body of knowledge of what students should know. The Performance Objectives The Performance Objectives are derived from the Key Ideas in the Core Curriculum. They are designed to match the Major Understandings and to focus assessment and instructional activities. Performance Objectives provide a general guideline for skill that students must demonstrate to provide evidence of the acquisition of the standard. The Major Understanding The Major Understandings are conceptual statements that make up the Content Standards within each Key Idea. They were taken from NYS Core Curriculum and the corresponding identification codes were also adopted. These statements should not be taught verbatim but developed conceptually through instructional activit