ATSW Curriculum Design 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which document typically outlines the timeline for teaching specific content standards within a school year?
- Curriculum guide
- Pacing guide (Correct answer)
- Scope and sequence
- Unit plan
Correct answer: Pacing guide
A pacing guide specifies when particular standards or topics should be taught throughout the academic year to ensure timely coverage.
Question 2: A teacher is designing a unit on the American Revolution. She starts by deciding what students should know and then works backward to plan instruction. This approach is called:
- Hunter's Lesson Design
- Understanding by Design (UbD) (Correct answer)
- Direct Instruction Model
- Experiential Learning Cycle
Correct answer: Understanding by Design (UbD)
Understanding by Design (UbD), developed by Wiggins and McTighe, begins with desired understandings and works backward to plan assessments and instruction.
Question 3: Content that is omitted from the curriculum, either intentionally or unintentionally, is referred to as the:
- Taught curriculum
- Hidden curriculum
- Null curriculum (Correct answer)
- Supplemental curriculum
Correct answer: Null curriculum
The null curriculum refers to knowledge, skills, or perspectives that are absent from the official or taught curriculum.
Question 4: A curriculum emphasizes Bloom's Taxonomy to ensure learning objectives span from basic recall to higher-order thinking. Which level is at the top of the revised taxonomy?
- Evaluating
- Synthesizing
- Creating (Correct answer)
- Analyzing
Correct answer: Creating
In the revised Bloom's Taxonomy, 'Creating' is the highest cognitive level, involving generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things.
Question 5: Which of the following best describes horizontal alignment in curriculum design?
- Ensuring content builds across grade levels
- Coordinating content and skills taught across subjects within the same grade level (Correct answer)
- Aligning curriculum to national standards
- Sequencing topics from concrete to abstract
Correct answer: Coordinating content and skills taught across subjects within the same grade level
Horizontal alignment ensures that related subjects within the same grade reinforce each other's content, skills, and vocabulary.
Question 6: A school's English and History departments agree to teach argumentative writing and primary source analysis at the same time. This is an example of:
- Curriculum compacting
- Coordinated horizontal alignment (Correct answer)
- Vertical articulation
- Differentiated instruction
Correct answer: Coordinated horizontal alignment
Coordinated horizontal alignment links related skills across disciplines within the same grade to reinforce learning.
Question 7: A curriculum designer wants to reduce redundancy by identifying topics already mastered by advanced students and allowing them to skip ahead. This strategy is called:
- Curriculum compacting (Correct answer)
- Acceleration
- Enrichment
- Differentiation
Correct answer: Curriculum compacting
Curriculum compacting involves pre-assessing student mastery and streamlining instruction to eliminate redundant coverage of already-known content.
ATSW Curriculum Design 4
Which document typically outlines the timeline for teaching specific content standards within a school year?