Why Layer Your Curriculum

by Kathie F. Nunley

There are several reasons for Layered Curriculum™. First, I think we can all agree as educators, that simply asking students to memorize or 'learn' certain material and then regurgitate it back at a future date leaves many of us feeling like something is missing in education. Rote learning has some merit and is useful for things we need memorized for convenience sake such as the alphabet or times tables. Any type of learning is certainly good for building neural pathways in the brain too. But, for the most part, learning is more meaningful when students are given the opportunity to play with, apply, manipulate and assimilate new ideas into their own schema.

For this reason, Layered Curriculum™ replaces the old traditional "percentage" method of teaching (I call it the 'percentage' method because grades were based on the percentage that students could remember on a test -- if you could recall 90% of the information, you scored a 90% or an A, 80% a B, etc.) All this really measures is how well students can remember and doesn't encourage long-term retention or a true understanding. It tells us little about new ideas generated from their learning, or how they learned to learn or how the new information fits into their old information.

Therefore, one of the primary reasons for the Layered Curriculum™ method, is to teach by giving students the opportunity to collect a wide variety of information on a topic, apply what they've learned to some situation, and then critique or analyze that information to see how it fits into what they already know.

A second reason for this type of teaching is just pure teacher survival in our diverse classrooms. All of you know what we face everyday -- different languages, different cultures, different abilities, different learning styles, various exceptionalities mainstreamed into our rooms sometimes with little, if any, support from special education, plus all those other exceptional darlings that the system cannot or will not identify, and students needing accommodation under Section 504.

In Utah, we have very large classes -- I can have as many as 45 - 50 in a general biology class -- and some days it feels like 44 of them have a behavior disorder. I simply couldn't fathom trying to lecture to such a diverse group and assume that even 2% of the students were benefiting.

In reality, only 20% of high school students are auditory learners -- meaning that they learn best by hearing information. About another 20 -25% are visual learners - they learn best by seeing information. The majority of our students are tactile learners-- they learn best by manipulating things.

With so few auditory learners in our classrooms, why are so many teachers lecturing to their students? Most likely because the vast majority of us are auditory learners. We all went to college. Just like natural selection, college 'selects' for auditory learners. We are the ones who are successful in college, not because we are necessarily smarter, but because college catered to our preferred learning style. Therefore, since most people teach in their own learning style, most teachers like to lecture. Who succeeds in these classrooms? The smartest kids? No, it's the ones who happen to have a learning style that matches our teaching style.

We must be aware of how much we rely on one method of teaching and offer activities that will reach as many different styles of learner as possible. Layered Curriculum™, as a student-centered model of differentiated instruction, focuses on the general types of learners - tactile, visual, and auditory, as well as including specific disabilities and languages. It puts the students in the drivers seat for their learning.

Kathie F. Nunley is an educational psychologist, author, researcher and speaker living in southern New Hampshire. Developer of the Layered Curriculum™ method of instruction, Dr. Nunley has authored several books and articles on teaching in mixed-ability classrooms and other problems facing today's teachers. Full references and additional teaching and parental tips are available at: http://Help4Teachers.com Email her:
Kathie (at) brains.org