LARRY LAMBERT

Along the way, certain curricular elements have emerged as being critical to the overall learning process. In trying to order them in my own mind, the first step is to refine the idea of instructional content. For me, this begins with words like "essential question, objective(s) and goal(s)". Taken collectively, they force us as teachers to consider what we want the students to learn and more significantly compel us to answer the question, "Why is it important?" Other factors of importance as we consider what and why we expect students to learn certain things is the standards; both the frameworks that we are teaching and any connections across the curriculum to other frameworks that we are able to incorporate. This includes embedded academics as well as academic frameworks containing subject matter than happens to overlap with our lesson planning process. Once we have determined the what, the next step in the process is to outline the how.