Rotating Curriculum

[ps1]

Has anyone here used a rotating curriculum for their class structure? Did you feel it was successful?

[mal103]

I prefer basics for beginners and to get senior grades to train with complex combinations that you can vary to keep pushing them.

I get the idea but it's a lazy way of teaching as it's fixed, if the students hang around long enough they will see the full cycle but they will probably struggle on the harder stuff and/or get bored on the simple stuff.

[Nidan Melbourne]

we often use a rotating curriculum. but there are guidelines for what each rank has to be able to do.

but otherwise we vary up what every rank has to do, in which it will keep them interested and challenged.

[Lupin1]

I can see using it in groups-- beginners group with like white, yellow and orange all working on the same basic stuff. Then intermediate group all working on the same stuff. The advanced group all working on the same stuff. I can't see it spanning the entire curriculum from white to black, but if you use it to simply break the class into smaller groups, I can definitely see it working. White belt material isn't too much different from orange belt material. Blue belt isn't all that different from purple belt. The browns can all pretty much be one group and, in our dojo anyway, the dan ranks pretty much do their own thing.

So I can totally see it working to an extent, but constrictions have to be put on it. Teaching a white belt advanced brown belt jump spinning crescent kicks on their first night most likely will not go over too well.

[Rateh]

We do a combination of rotating and progressive curriculums. Some stuff is done in rotation, with rank groups. For example: there are three separate sets of self defense techniques for low ranks. Low ranks being white, yellow, and purple. So every 10 weeks we switch to a different set, and all low ranks work on the same set together. So self defense is part of our rotating curriculum, and is done by rank groups of three.

On the other hand, some of our curriculum is progressive. For example: white belts must perform stretch kick, front kick, axe kick, and roundhouse kick / yellow belts are axe kick, roundhouse kick, side kick, and step side kick / purple belts are roundhouse kick, side kick, front leg hook kick, and hook kick.

Some of our curriculum is a combination of rotating and progressive. For example: orange, green, and blue belts must all break one board each with a side kick and a flying side kick. Orange and green break individually (meaning that they have five chances to break the first one, and then five to break the second). Blue break as a station break (meaning that they have five chances to break both in a row, so if they break the first and then not the second they must start over and break the first again, until they break both in the same attempt)

Personally, I find our method to be much easier to teach then a purely progressive curriculum. It also benefits the students because they can work together as a team, instead of only having the same five to six students of their own rank to partner with.

[bushido_man96]

Great comments so far! Rateh, I do see the value in keeping groups of ranks together to work on similar techniques and curricula; its good to see the ranks working together, and realizing that they are doing a lot of the same stuff. And repititions like that beget success.

[ps1]

I was pretty curious about some of it. I can see doing it with kata/forms without much issue. Even with many striking techniques. But I am at a loss with how you would do a jump kick before learning a front kick. I'm guessing those modifications are made on the fly, however.

My academy is BJJ and MMA. The rotating curriculum works great with MMA due to the relatively low number of techniques used and their simplicity. However, for BJJ, it's a bit trickier. I've had to modify it and have overlap in the techniques. I can't, for example, see someone going an entire year before learning a simple cross choke.

Overall, it has made the classes at my academy far more organized and allowed me to put much more focus on the quality of the technique the students perform. In a 45 min class, having to go from group to group to group, correcting and teaching all of them highly technical movements was becoming almost impossible. Now, I can teach the whole group a single move, focus on all the details and circulate to make minor corrections as needed.

[bushido_man96]

I think it would work better in a grappling setting, for sure. I've noticed this the more I work through BJJ techniques in our DT club. It seems like you can observe and pepper in wrinkles based off the student's performance as you go around checking things out.

With TKD, its a bit tougher. We do basics every class, the same ones all the time. This isn't rotating, but it is all-inclusive, and the basics correspond to much of how the techniques are done in the forms, which kind of doubles the amount of work, and helps speed forms along. But for advanced kicking techniques, its tougher to rotate the curriculum, and the forms are pretty well rank-based. The forms part of the class slows things down the most for us.

[sensei8]

The SKIF uses the Rotating Curriculum especially in Universities. Something to chew on!

[bushido_man96]

The SKIF uses the Rotating Curriculum especially in Universities. Something to chew on!

Is there a copy of what this curriculum looks like floating around? Perhaps it would give some ideas for classes.