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Remember your students will have to be tested yearly in k-8 and have to take an exit exam in oder to graduate from high school.  These are referred to as high-stakes tests and are important for students to do well on. If you know a certain topic in the curriculum you are expected to teach is on the test maybe you should spend a little extra time on that for the well being of your students.

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We only have so much time in the school year. As much as you would like to give every concept a three week intensive student-lead project, that is just not feasible. Sure, they might learn more about Antebellum Maryland by engaging in a semester long research project on the differing opinions about succession between the tidewater planters of Talbot County and the Piedmont farmers and loggers of Frederick County, but time may not alot for that. If you have a year to teach them the history of Maryland you really have 160 class periods to cover a period from 1632 until yesterday.

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Some subjects, such as foreign languages, may not make sense out of context.  

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Some subjects, such as foreign languages, may not make sense out of context.  

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The pluperfect tense will make little sense to your budding Latin scholars if you have not first covered Latin pronunciations or their alphabet. You cannot start your students with trigonometry if they have never covered how to find the area of a triangle

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You have to figure out what order you will teach topics in. Your local guides may have some suggestions or even a prescribed course, but this is not always the case. You have to figure out who your students are as learners, what background knowledge they have, and what is essential information for the mastery of a subject.

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Overall purple or Vision for the course.

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Overall purple or Vision for the course.

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What do you want your students to take away from this year, semester, or term?

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How to create a curriculum: start large, narrow down.  Things will go a lot better if you plan.

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Different groups of people will get upset about different things. It could be a book students have to read, health lessons that refer to human sexuality, or even the mention of evolution. It does not matter if the local populace is flat out wrong by not believing in evolution. If that would cause an uproar that must be noted. It is tricky to figure out what will exactly set off the locals, people are irrational, so our textbook recommends conferring with the veteran teachers at your School.

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This is the trickiest limitation to figure out.

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A school could have a very diverse leaner base. A school could ensure every class receives the same biology lesson. Some schools may encourage co-teaching.  Co-teaching means you would have to lesson plan with another teacher, so you cannot do things 100 percent your own way.

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Every school has different expectations

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Knowledge of the locale plays a part in this.  

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Knowledge of the locale plays a part in this.  

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In science and social studies it is beneficial for students to learn about their local area. It would not make much sense for the school system of Chester County PA to completely ignore the events at Valley Forge in lieu of learning about The Battle of Mobile Bay.  David Farragut's daring pass of Fort Morgan may very well be dramatic, but Washington's struggles at Valley Forge are much more relevant to the locale.  I grew up in a wetland.  In science we did experiments with frogs, horned creek chubs, and local river grasses.  It connected to my existing knowledge of Rock Creek, the Potomac River, and the Chesapeake Water Shed at large.  It would not make sense for me to have learned about the high desert or scrubland of New Mexico in fourth grade. I spent my time catching newts down in Cabin John, I had never chased Gila monsters outside of Taos. The theory of Constructivism applies to this. My teacher's were building on my existing knowledge.  Much of which I gained outside of school.

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"In addition to state guidelines, school districts often have curriculum guides that prescribe the course of study for a given course or sequence of courses" (Ryan, Cooper, Tauer, p. 129). Essentially your local school district will have certain expectations beyond the standards adopted by your state.

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This is a great example of Modern Federalism.

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This is a great example of Modern Federalism.

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The Federal Government put out a call for a more national curriculum to be developed, and the National Governors Association got together and coordinated state laws to meet the desires of the Federal Government. It took a combination of both state and federal laws to get where we are today.

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As of 2010 forty states adopted the Common Core State Standards. This means students from all states should be at the same level in English language arts and Mathematics. A student from Alabama should not
be less prepared for college or career than a student from Oregon because of regional educational differences.

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There are four main reasons why you cannot.