Why
Layered Curriculum®
by
Kathie F. Nunley
There
are several reasons for Layered Curriculum®. First, I
think we can all agree as educators, that simply asking students
to memorize or 'learn' certain material and then regurgitate
it back at a future date leaves many of us feeling like something
is missing in education. Rote learning has some merit and
is useful for things we need memorized for convenience sake
such as the alphabet or times tables. Any type of learning
is certainly good for building neural pathways in the brain
too. But, for the most part, learning is more meaningful when
students are given the opportunity to play with, apply, manipulate
and assimilate new ideas into their own schema.
For
this reason, Layered Curriculum replaces the old traditional
"percentage" method of teaching (I call it the 'percentage'
method because grades were based on the percentage that students
could remember on a test -- if you could recall 90% of the
information, you scored a 90% or an A, 80% a B, etc.) All
this really measures is how well students can remember and
doesn't encourage long-term retention or a true understanding.
It tells us little about new ideas generated from their learning,
or how they learned to learn or how the new information fits
into their old information.
Therefore,
one of the primary reasons for the Layered Curriculum method,
is to teach by giving students the opportunity to collect
a wide variety of information on a topic, apply what they've
learned to some situation, and then critique or analyze that
information to see how it fits into what they already know.
A
second reason for this type of teaching is just pure teacher
survival in our diverse classrooms. All of you know what we
face everyday -- different languages, different cultures,
different abilities, different learning styles, various exceptionalities
mainstreamed into our rooms sometimes with little, if any,
support from special education, plus all those other exceptional
darlings that the system cannot or will not identify, and
students needing accommodation under Section 504.
In
Utah, we have very large classes -- I can have as many as
45 - 50 in a general biology class -- and some days it feels
like 44 of them have a behavior disorder. I simply couldn't
fathom trying to lecture to such a diverse group and assume
that even 2% of the students were benefiting.
In
reality, only 20% of high school students are auditory learners
-- meaning that they learn best by hearing information. About
another 20 -25% are visual learners - they learn best by seeing
information. The majority of our students are tactile learners--
they learn best by manipulating things.
With
so few auditory learners in our classrooms, why are so many
teachers lecturing to their students? Most likely because
the vast majority of us are auditory learners. We all went
to college. Just like natural selection, college 'selects'
for auditory learners. We are the ones who are successful
in college, not because we are necessarily smarter, but because
college catered to our preferred learning style. Therefore,
since most people teach in their own learning style, most
teachers like to lecture. Who succeeds in these classrooms?
The smartest kids? No, it's the ones who happen to have a
learning style that matches our teaching style.
We
must be aware of how much we rely on one method of teaching
and offer activities that will reach as many different styles
of learner as possible. Layered Curriculum, as a student-centered
model of differentiated instruction, focuses on the general
types of learners - tactile, visual, and auditory, as well
as including specific disabilities and languages. It puts
the students in the drivers seat for their learning
Dr Kathie Nunley