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
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,
Essential school teachers don’t have to write all their curricula from scratch. Materials that support their beliefs are coming onto the scene, and spreading across networks with information-age speed as teachers try them, critique them, and make them their own. All during the 20 years he taught at Fox Lane High School in Bedford, New York, Arthur Eisenkraft chafed at
*ATLAS Communities. The Coalition of Essential Schools was a founding partner in this approach, which aims for coherent “Authentic Teaching, Learning, and Assessment for all Students” by connecting schools, families, and community in a “pathway” from kindergarten through grade 12. (Other partners were the School Development Program at Yale, Project Zero at Harvard, and the Education Development Center in Boston.)
* History Alive! offers auxiliary or stand-alone teaching materials integrating U.S. and world history with the arts, for middle and high school levels. Included are images, experiential group activities, reader response and writing activities, skill-oriented tasks, and prompts for culminating projects. (Teachers Curriculum Institute, Palo Alto, CA, 800-343- 6828 800-343- 6828 ; www.teachtci.com) * Facing History and Ourselves offers materials and workshops
Numbers of Essential schools have selected one of the new inquiry-based science texts, many of which were developed with National Science Foundation funding; but other teachers prefer to adapt units from different texts or use modules or activity kits from various suppliers. Some from each category follow, on the recommendation of CES member schools or Centers: Active Physics, high school
Since 1989, the question of what mathematics schools should teach and how has been much influenced by several major documents: the curriculum and evaluation standards issued by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), and several reports by the National Research Council’s Mathematical Sciences Education Board, including Reshaping School Mathematics: A Philosophy and Framework for Curriculum (1990). Generally, these
Many Essential schools committed to portfolio assessment struggle to create and maintain consistent ways to collect, select, organize, assess, and follow student work in that manner. If they could, they might use portfolios as valid and reliable evidence of student learning over time, even substituting that documentation for standardized multiple-choice tests. A source of help has emerged, ironically, from American
Long known for its Advanced Placement (AP) courses and examinations, the College Board has recently introduced a set of demanding but flexible high school curricular materials, this time aimed at every student. Each frames a year’s thoughtful work with plenty of room for teacher choice of texts, suggests authentic assessment tasks to imbed in the course of study, and can