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Executive Summary for Guidance & Career
Purpose Statement
The K-12 Guidance Curriculum is Easton, Redding and Region 9’s plan for instruction. It provides the framework for what students need to know and be able to do in order to apply skills they have acquired through the guidance curriculum in a real world environment.
Guiding Principles
The K-12 guidance curriculum is framed by guiding principles that ensure to all students the access to information and experiences that will enable them to:
Standards
The K-12 guidance curriculum is based on standards developed by the ER9 guidance curriculum work group, before the availability of national standards. The curriculum has since been aligned with the National Standards for School Counseling Programs developed by the American School Counselor Association. The ER9 standards are developmentally sequenced for K-4, 5-8, and 9-12 students. The curriculum is presented at each grade level using the content and skills that are developmentally appropriate. Competencies, skills, content, suggested activities and ongoing assessment ideas are presented in the Guidance Curriculum Grids (Gr. K-4, 5-8, 9-12) and vertical documents.
The Curriculum
The guidance curriculum workgroup designed the curriculum around the concept of a Learning Spiral. Within the framework of the K-12 structure, concepts and skills are introduced and reinforced at specific grade levels. Students have many opportunities to demonstrate mastery of these concepts and skills within increasingly complex learning environments.
The K-12 curriculum is intended to provide all students with experiences, materials, and information in four major content areas: School Success and Educational Development; Career Awareness and Exploration; Personal and Social Development; and Community Pride and Involvement. While standards in all grade levels reflect attention to each area, Personal and Social Development requires the greatest degree of instruction in the elementary grades. Conversely, Career Awareness and Exploration, which includes educational planning, is emphasized to the greatest degree at the high school level.
Concurrently with the delivery of concepts, the K-12 curriculum leads to eventual mastery of skills in the following areas:
These skills are taught or reinforced through attainment of the guidance competencies, and will be assessed throughout the grades. Common assessments have been developed for Grades 5, 8, and 12.
Types of Instruction
Teachers will use a variety of instructional strategies to deliver and build guidance concepts and skills with students. These include direct instruction by the teacher or counselor, working with a whole class to introduce a concept or a skill. Additionally, teachers may introduce or reinforce a concept or skill through other academic content areas, such as social studies, language arts, mathematics, science, or world language. Teachers and counselors may employ role playing activities, small group discussions, collaborative work, performance-based tasks, literature to represent authentic situations, and community outreach activities. Work group members have developed a resource binder with sample lessons connected to guidance standards.
Types of Assessment Directly Aligned to the Guidance Curriculum
Assessment of the guidance competencies takes place throughout the grade levels. At the K-4 level, classroom teachers will have individual discretion to use a variety of assessments including ongoing teacher observation, role-play, self-evaluation, check lists, and journals to determine mastery, often including assessments in academic content areas. Suggestions are offered through the guidance curriculum. At the middle school level, counselors will deliver a curriculum that includes assessment to students at each grade level. At the high school, assessments have been developed for all guidance programs. Many of these will be entered in the students’ guidance portfolio, located in the Career Center.
Guidance group members have designed common assessments of all guidance skills for Grades five, eight, and twelve. These assessments follow performance tasks, where students are required to demonstrate understanding of each skill in order to solve the problem or choose the best course of action.
In addition, there are smaller assessments of skills at various grade levels, so that, by grade five, all skills have been introduced, reinforced, and assessed at least once, before the first common assessment.
Summary
The ER9 Guidance Curriculum will be delivered consistently to students in all grade levels at each school. Developed independently by the K-12 guidance curriculum work group, it includes and exceeds the competencies named in the national standards. The program will be taught somewhat differently at the various grade levels, depending on whether classroom teacher or counselor delivers instruction. Sample lessons, a glossary of terms, and a bibliography are included. Content and skills will be assessed regularly by a variety of means. Common assessments measure acquisition of guidance/health skills at three different junctures.
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