Describe quality standards for assessing curriculum resources.

Assess curriculum materials based on quality standards. 

Perform a readability analysis and sex bias analysis for a passage of text.

This week's lesson deals with identifying and selecting curriculum resource materials. One might ask if this step should take place before or after the development of the course framework. (Which comes first the chicken or the egg?) Regardless of when this step takes place, the process you will learn in this lesson will be a valuable skill. Who knows? One day you might be asked to serve on a state textbook selection committee or have to select supplemental resource materials for your own class.

In this lesson, you will consider what characteristics make a quality curriculum resource and will practice assessing curriculum resources. Try the procedures out on a variety of curriculum resources. You might be surprised to find out the readability levels of most high school materials.

Please go to Vista Webct to find this week's reading.

View the Powerpoint on Identifying and Selecting Curriculum Materials or download it here.

Phase IV- 40 pts

This week you will complete Phase IV of our project. You will need to locate two curriculum resources related to the subject you have picked for your project. Please choose either a textbook and/or curriculum guide. Using Appendix A "Curriculum Materials Assessment Form" from the text complete a thorough assessment of the two curriculum resources. Also select a passage of text from a curriculum resource and determine the readability of the material using the Flesch Formula, the Cloze Procedure and the Forecast Formula. You can type directly into the attached word document, rename as yourlastnamephase4.doc and email to bwilson@ncsu.edu by Nov.13.

The final project for this class will be due by Dec.4 if you would like to start working ahead. The final product consists of a PowerPoint that includes the four phases of your project completed in earlier classes. The rubric for the content requirements and the rubric for the presentation of the final project should be used as your development guide for this presentation. When developing this presentation keep in mind that your targeted audience is a county school board or county government that is voting on whether or not to allow you to offer the course or program. (See the rubric for more detail.) You can choose you to present your powerpoint to the class using Elluminate on Dec.4 from 7-9pm or you can choose to mail me a VCR tape or DVD by Dec.4 of you making the presentation to a mock group. If you choose to present on Elluminate we will have a practice night on Nov. 27 where we will learn to navigate the system.

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