At the elementary school level, teachers who think about how-not just what-students learn often notice what cognitive researchers have also shown: Children learn best in a social context that supports them in a web of caring relationships. From the Developmental Studies Center (DSC) in Oakland, California, new curricula in reading and mathematics is available that explicitly links those subjects to
What can our school do about unexcused absences? How do I know if my child is making enough progress? How much should teachers have to work outside the school day? Putting questions at the heart of curriculum, instruction, and school governance opens up the change process to fresh design solutions. The Right Question Project has worked for the past decade
At Fenway Middle College, a Boston alternative high school, the humanities course “Whose America Is It?” explores American society from pre-Columbian North America to the present from the point of view of the common person, using sources and approaches from history, literature, sociology, psychology, political science, and the fine arts. Students probe three periods–the discovery of America; the Industrial Revolution,
All 350 students at the International High School in Long Island City, New York are recent immigrants with very limited English, but the rich and coherent interdisciplinary curriculum they follow here treats this multilingual population as an asset, not a drawback. In heterogeneous groups, taking interdisciplinary courses organized around themes such as “Motion” and “Origins,” students maintain and develop proficiency
Now a freshman at City College in New York City, Jason was a senior at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School in the Bronx when he wrote the following as part of a “reading autobiography” required for his graduation portfolio. “In class, he looked as if he were never paying attention,” said Nancy Mann, Hamer’s principal, but his reflection revealed
A big issue for me is maintaining a focus while leaving room for the serendipitous. Much of the good teaching I have done has involved seizing the moment and running with it. For example, a student will have had experiences or an insight that I did not anticipate when planning the unit. Something impacting the curriculum will happen in the
What does a year-long “academic literacy” course look like? One example offered by the teachers involved with WestEd’s Strategic Literacy Initiative uses three long units that build on each other, as follows: From September through November, the class focuses on “reading self and society”–finding and exploring written materials that interest each reader while building and reflecting on new skills and
Figure 1: Essential Questions to Shape a School’s Curriculum Figure 1: A Botany Unit Designed Around Essential Questions Figure 1: A Project in Factoring for First-Year Algebra Students Figure 1: Asking Essential Questions about AIDS Figure 1: Homo-Insectivorous and the Dilemma of World Hunger What are the aims of a high school curriculum? Getting to a clear answer is the necessary first step in rethinking
How do you evaluate a student’s artisitc expression? Parker School arts and humanities teachers drafted these common “criteria for excellence,” then used them to create holistic rubrics with which to assess creative work in each of the school’s two-year Divisions. Preparation – You develop your own message. (Note: The message could be the medium.) – You use an art form
Teachers at the Parker School in Fort Devens, Massachusetts created their own curriculum template, juxtaposing “texts and resources” that describe content area knowledge with “tasks and activities” that elicit key skills they want students to practice: responding to text, creating new work, and performing or demonstrating their understanding. All the year’s projects in every content area reflect the school’s Essential
Draw a graph to illustrate each of the following situations. Prices are now rising more slowly than at any time during the last five years. I really enjoy cold milk or hot milk, but I hate lukewarm milk! The smaller the boxes are, then the more boxes we can load into the van. After the concert there was a stunned
by Grant Wiggins What is essential must be experienced as essential. Essential facts and theories are only understood as the results of one’s own work; they are not self-evident notions learned through words as “knowledge,” but the residue of effective performances–Habits of Mind. When they are coaching students to engage in collaborative inquiry, teachers need to insure that essential habits
Many Essential schools use the advisory group structure as a way of increasing the personal connection among students and between students and the teaching staff. At New Mission High School in Boston, where “advisory” opens and closes every day, students begin the morning meetings with a ten-minute ritual that Essential school teachers often use themselves to build professional community. At
The challenge teachers face in integrating their course work across the disciplines is often a matter of coming up with the right questions. At Brimmer & May School, the faculty uses Bloom’s theory of the six levels of cognition- knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation-as they design tasks for students. The result is assignments like this one from a
If curriculum is to reflect the goals of a school and the needs of its students, it makes sense for teachers to develop it them-selves. But how might they do it, and when? And is it better to adopt or adapt materials ‘off the shelf’ or should students and teachers be creating curriculum together? Five math and science teachers are
Much of the “quiet crisis” in adolescent literacy has to do with empowering students to use language critically– seeing it not as a barrier but an entry into a world they can question and shape. As jason sat Through his seventh-grade classes in those days–the room crowded to bursting with New York City students like himself–he learned to tune out
PROBLEM: Your skateboard is stuck under a dumpster. To get it out, you have a 4′ by 6′ sheet of plywood and a curb. You weigh 150 pounds. Can you lift the dumpster to get it out, and how? Faced with this question, students confront several of the Coalition’s nine common principles at once: they must take steps on their
The following books and resources have been recommended by various Essential school teachers and consultants interviewed for this article: CURRICULUM AND EVALUATION STANDARDS SCHOOL MATHEMATICS, NCTM, 1606 Association Drive, Reston, VA 22091. MATH AND SCIENCE FRAMEWORK CALIFORNIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS K-12. Publication Sales, California State Dept. of Education, PO Box 271, Sacramento, CA 95802-0271. “Everybody Counts: A Report to the Nation
James Beane, Affect in the Curriculum: Toward Democracy, Dignity, and Diversity. New York: Teachers College Press, 1990. Focuses on integrated curriculum in the middle school years. Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind. New York: Basic Books, 1992. A partner with CES in the Atlas project and a leading theorist on assessment and “multiple intelligences.” Heidi Hayes Jacobs, ed., Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design
Alexander, Wallace M., with Carr, Dennis, and McAvoy, Kathy, Student-Oriented Curriculum: Asking the Right Questions. National Middle School Association, Columbus, OH: 1995. Brady, Marion, What’s Worth Teaching? Selecting, Organizing, and Integrating Knowledge. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY: 1989. Burns, Rebecca Crawford, Dissolving the Boundaries: Planning for Curriculum Integration in Middle and Secondary Schools. Appalachia Educational Laboratory, Charleston,
Readings “Arts Education for the 21st Century,” American Council for the Arts, 1 E. 53rd St. New York, NY 10022; 212-223-2787 212-223-2787 . Ernest Boyer, “Making the Connections: The Arts and School Reform,” in Why We Need the Arts (New York: ACA Books, 1989). College Board and Getty Center joint project, The Role of the Arts in Unifying the High
How can you tell when someone is a good reader? What do teachers look for when they are trying to understand how well someone reads? Asking students this question helps begin to unpack and demystify the reading process, say researchers from the Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) at WestEd, the federal regional educational laboratory in San Francisco. Not everyone realizes how
Background reading: John Patrick Diggins, “Science and the American Experiment: How Newton’s Laws Shaped the Constitution,” from The Sciences (New York Academy of Science). The major aim of this project is to give students an opportunity to explore the relationship between science and society. Since the Newtonian Revolution, science and scientists have gained an authority rivaling the priests and their
The Atlas Communities project has put together a design tool (forthcoming) that suggests using the following categories in planning curriculum: Generative topics . . . * Are developmentally appropriate. * Are broad and complex. * Are interesting to students and teachers. * Are important for understanding responsible citizenship and the disciplines. These criteria can help you make decisions about what
In a High-Stakes Testing Environment, Performance-Based Assessment Gains Respect Essential schools around New York took alarm when their state commissioner of education recently required all high school students to pass before graduation five rigorous, curriculum-specific exams previously given only for the “Regents diploma.” Such one-time, high-stakes tests do an injustice, Essential school leaders argued, to schools valuing depth of learning