After reading the articles, I am torn between which curriculum idea is the best. I think you have to combine all of the ideas to make the best curriculum.
Wiggins talked about making students responsible and doing a lot of questioning to get them thinking. Questioning is something that my school does a lot of. We spent all our PD last summer learning about questioning and how to make it effective. Making students responsible is something that I think all schools struggle with.
Wraga talked about having common goals for each subject. This is something that has really taken place in my school this year. The district decided they didn't like the way that Writing was being taught in the school. Therefore, this summer the writing group, which included me, spent 6 days working on coming up with a new curriculum. We decided that we needed to put more focus on integrating the writing into all the subject areas. That way, you don't get what Wraga was talking about at the beginning of his article...something along the lines of students don't think that they should get point marked off for writing mistakes when they are doing some writing for social studies. I find this very common in my class. They know how to write when we are working on it, but when they have to write something for another subject, they forget all the rules for writing. We are hoping with our more integrated writing, we will see it carry over to anytime they have to write something. We also integrate our science or social studies material into our reading. This helps you get all your content in without screaming trying to fit it in by only doing it during its specific content area.
Applebee talked about a conversational, connected core curriculum. Again this is something that is somewhat used at my school but it is definitely something that needs worked on. Applebee wants the students to be able to connect the content to real life and have a meaningful conversation about it with their peers. This is something that I try in my classroom, but it isn't to the level that Applebee is wanting. I would like to hear some ideas if any of you are successful with this.
In conclusion, I thought all 3 of these authors brought great ideas to the table on curriculum. I know that in my classroom, I use a little bit of all of them to get the content covered and I think that is the best way it can be done.
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Hi Ivy,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like your school is definitely on the right track. I appreciated your comments, I think it is great that you are able to incorporate Science and Social Studies into your reading! This is the exact idea I would dream of! It is hard to fit everything in, but being able to intregrate these would be great. I really hope we do meet as a district again next summer so we can all voice our opinions after being able to digest how the curriculum guide helped or hindered this year:)
It sounds like a PD regarding higher levels of questioning would be very helpful. I am always looking for ways to do this for my students at the elementary level, also while considering their special needs and disabilities.
ReplyDeleteAs far as connecting things to real life, I have to find new ways of doing that all the time. Sometimes it can be as simple as showing a picture or video clip, other times it could involve field trips and service learning projects. Sometimes I take for granted the experiences and knowledge that I have, and have to step back and realize that they might not be able to truly understand the lesson if they can't relate any personal meaning to the elements being discussed.
I really like that your district included you in the curriculum planning in regards to writing- it reminds me of a post on Bethany's blog about this (go read it). I also like how you have taken parts of each of the curriculum models and applied it to your situation- I would hope that all teachers would have the luxury of doing that. As for the responses to your post I like how Kriista has talked about the help vs. hinderance of the curriculum guide- I always wrestle with that and like you said Ivy making things relevant--like Robin pointed out is so important.
ReplyDeleteI also agreed with Wiggins when it comes to making students reposonsible. The problem is, so many student's aren't responsible anymore for any of their homework, actions, or words. How can we teach this responsiblity and in turn, when we teach it, will we see the results that we're looking for?
ReplyDeleteIn case you can't tell- I've had issues with responsiblity this week. My students stuck scissors up each others noses becase they were in each other's way and it wasn't their fault (so they, and their parents, say.). I know that's no where in our curriculium....
But I digress... I agree with one of the comments above, which loosely stated that I am to provide experiences. I know that I have to provide the experiences for children who have not had the opportunities which I and other children is the classroom have had... if only just to level the playing field of knowledge. This is one of the challenges I seem to have teaching in a school with an extremely wide socio-economic population. In my classroom, I've got students who have been to Europe and Hawaii and kids who have yet to go to Cincinnati. With such a diverse population, how can you not provide the experiences?