While reading the book "Curriculum 21" by Heidi Hayes Jacobs, I came across a few things that caught my attention so far.
- in the "Upgrading Assessment Types" (p.21-26), I liked how she included step-by-step ideas for upgrading. As a staff, I hope we can start the process during staff meetings to find assessment replacements. With concern to step 2, we do not have any IT members. We have a parent volunteer come in to help when he is available. The principal and I are learning about what we do have available and researching new sources.
- "Shedding unneccessary studies..." (p.21): Looking at the textbooks we have provided to us, the subjects are divided harshly. Any elementry level ideas how to combine Social Studies topics?
- I need to get new maps for my classroom for the students to use. When I came in all I had a was globe and the "Mercator Projection" on a pull-down screen. Good thing we just got Smartboards for our classrooms!!!
- I like the suggestion posed on page 40. Replacing the traditional state history teaching with "(1) focus your state's history on it's role in the larger American history narrative; (2) make the state's perspective more personal by using a case study model and the Internet to interview students in other parts of the state; (3) keep an ongoing view of global connections and relationships as a constant in both local and national history." (Jacobs, 40)
-With concern to the topic of upgrading curriculum, I noticed in my science textbooks that more emphasis is put on life science than physical science. When working on our accreditation as a whole staff, we asked "Who is teaching about magnets or push/pull or balls and ramps?" It was found out that those topics were at the end of the science book and there wasn't time in the school year to cover them. We have discussed how to cover all of the topics more efficiently so that every necessary topic gets covered.
-As stated on the book on page 47, there is a significant gap in K-12 curriculum. We also noticed this during our Accreditation process.
- For all subject areas, not just Language Arts, I incorporated more presentation skills into lessons. My 1st & 2nd graders performed readers' theaters, introduced books to others, and taught lessons to each other.
-Does anyone know of good Webquest sites for younger elementary levels?
-When we received test results back on our students this past year, we noticed that they received lowers scores on "reasoning". While discussing with other teachers, they honestly stated that it is difficult for them to teach the "problem-solving" sections in the Math curriculum and still get to all of the content for the school year. This school year, my goal is to put more emphasis on problem-solving because I beleive that the students will be able to connect to the content better than just memorizing what they need to know.
The state study is an interesting topic. A while back one of my schools decided to add a Wisconsin Studies class to the high school curriculum. It was the only non required social studies option available. I think it is bizarre that they didn't focus on other more relavant topics like global issues, economics or even psychology. Wisconsin studies, while interesting in its own way I didn't feel was as important as other social studies electives.
ReplyDeleteOn the Wisconsin Studies class -- it's amazing how little the kids know about their own state since it was removed from the elementary curriculum in my home district. I agree that other options should be available,but shouldn't you know about the place where you are living?
ReplyDeleteOn the science curriculum -- Sometimes it makes sense to skip a chapter in the book in order to get to the end of the book. Teachers need to talk more with each other. How hard would it be to say to the next year's teacher that you didn't get that far so perhaps the next teacher could make sure that she did get to that chapter? At Stockbridge the science curriculum was a spiral. Did they need to do animals every year? And the chapters were in the same order too, so if electricity was in the last chapter in one grade, it was in the last chapter of the next year's too.
You have a lot of good stuff in this post, Heather. Gives me a lot to think about.
I liked the chapter on upgrading assessments, especially that staff development time be spent to actually work on curriculum and assessments.
ReplyDeleteWe need to decide what to teach first, and then use the textbook to do it, if textbooks are the best choice. I hope to see us move to digital textbooks or collections of resources soon, especially for science and social studies.
I like the idea of studying your state's history within the context of US history -- and, by implication, studying US history within the context of World History.
Yes, Pam, you should know something about where you live, but that shouldn't be the only thing you know. Our focus tends to be very geocentric and ethnocentric -- I think there are probably still books on our shelves that imply that people in other countries wear traditional dress -- and I don't think there are are lot of wooden shoes on the streets of 21st Century Amsterdam.
I agree that you did a good job of asking questions about reality based on the theories in the book.