Developing the Curriculum Product - Assignment Example

The situation identified at Chambers Elementary School is a poor reading achievement by fourth-grade learners. The Principal has noted that the students have shown slower progress in reading comprehension compared to fourth and fifth-grade ones. The need for the development of a curriculum product is made more urgent when it is remembered that although there is a reading program adopted by the school some time back, teachers did not support it, stating that they were uncomfortable in using it and that it was hard to use.

This means that a new tool needs to be developed, and the views of the teachers need to be taken into consideration to ensure that the product developed gets accepted by all players. Various data can be used to justify the selected curriculum product. The data chosen needs to demonstrate that there is a problem in the fourth-grade reading classes. To highlight this, the most important data is student scores. The scores of the fourth-grade students, especially in the reading tests, must be collected and collated over time.

In addition, their scores in the other subjects should also be analyzed and compared so as to demonstrate that the problem is specifically with the reading classes; and not the general ability of the students. Additionally, these scores need to be compared with those of the fifth and sixth graders, especially those obtained from similar or near similar reading tests. This will be the best way to prove that there is a problem with the fourth grade.The best curriculum development model that can be used to develop the curriculum product is Kirkpatrick’s four-level model of program evaluation.

Kirkpatrick (2007) states that this model is one of the easiest ways of simplifying what would otherwise be a complex process. It has been widely used as a professional system for evaluating educational programs (Polavac, 2015). This program is preferred because it focuses specifically on the outcomes of educational programs and evaluates their strengths and weaknesses.  The model provides that evaluation of education programs needs to be done in four levels. These are the satisfaction and reaction of the leaner to the program in question, measurement of the learning meant to be done using the program, for example, improvement or gain in skills or knowledge, expected change in behavior of the learner, which in this case improvement in reading comprehension and lastly the results of the program on a wider scale (Posavac, 2015).

Since it has been tested and found to be a simple, effective way of evaluating a program, it is likely to give reliable results in evaluating the program at Chambers Elementary school.The developed curriculum product is expected to aid in giving reliable feedback on the causes of poor reading comprehension at Chambers. If followed well, it will point out the areas of weakness in the implementation of the reading program that is already in place. This will in turn help in formulating a more effective program or adjusting the existing program to ensure that the learning objectives of the reading comprehension are achieved.