Setting: A university tutorial room

Timing: The last class for the year

Participants: An international group of 3rd year BEd (Early Years) students and their lecturer

Subject: Curriculum in the early childhood setting

Lecturer: It seems incredible that we are finally at the end of the course! What I'd like to do today, as part of wrapping up this course and helping to prepare you for your new careers as teachers, is to check that you have a good understanding now of the term ‘curriculum’ and what it means in terms of your teaching practice. If you think back to the beginning of this course, I asked you to define what you understood by the term ‘curriculum’ and it was evident in that early discussion that as a group we had a range of different opinions about it and also quite a bit of confusion about what ‘curriculum’ might mean for us as teachers. We've spent a lot of time on this topic and we've looked at many aspects of it. Take about 15 minutes to discuss this now and then we will discuss it as a group. Get someone from your group to record your ideas, so that we can share them.

Students move off into groups of about six people and begin the task set by the lecturer.

Anna: I remember this activity – we were all over the place about what we thought a curriculum is.