The Written Curriculum

Any curriculum planning document should reflect IB philosophy and have a clear lesson structure and
show that it is concept driven, inquiry based, trans/ inter-disciplinary, reflective has differentiation, learner
profile development and aspects of international mindedness.
The lesson plan being critiqued is based in Science and is developed for HL/ Year 1. and can be found
below.
Throughout the unit plan content, skills and concepts are defined. The teacher has made sure the lesson
plan is concept driven using the IB methodology. Assessments are clearly defined.
The inquiries to be carried out are clearly listed and vast although the language of these could be
improved. Action verbs are used and one hopes these would be attached to objectives of lessons when
being presented to students.
This particular teacher also reflects on how well the concepts were received by students and what further
teaching and learning needs to occur for students concept based learning.
The lesson plan does however lack links to the IB learner profile and shows no differentiation and very
little links to ATL skills. The teacher should definitely have more links to ATL skills in a unit of this length
and specific content. It would be suggested that as students are expected to carry out both individual and
group tasks areas of self-management, thinking, social and communication could all be explored in depth
during this unit. Simply aligning them to the specific tasks may have helped produce better results when
using the microscope or debating the subject of abortion.
In terms of differentiation prior learning is not considered in the plan and this may impact student
progress.
When teaching an area of genetics it is imperative that teachers consider how different cultures around
the world approach such a sensitive area of teaching and learning and make links with globalization and
international mindedness. Were the cultural differences of students taken into account whilst the lesson
was planned and were these ideas explored when talking about sensitive areas such as abortion and
genetics? An excellent teacher would have incorporated world views here and had some trans-disciplinary
aspects linked to social studies or religious students curricula.
Improvements could also be made to the conceptual learning through the chosen activities the teacher
simply lists class discussion / debate for some points and later in reflection points out that students found
it difficult to remain logical and empirical when it came to ideas about abortion. This is a good reflection
however more detailed activities around the initial goal would have ensured better teaching and learning.
In summation this particular teacher has utilized the tool provided to her adequately and has provided a
good reflection on student learning. It is clear that had more differentiation, ATL skills links been present
the quality of teaching and learning from an international or IB perspective may have been of a better.