Curriculum Models

Let's take a trip through time....

Schooling first started with very little idea of curriculum.  Most of our models were designed from educators who had all the knowledge and served as leaders within their community imparting knowledge they had onto students and community. They were the gatekeepers to all things education.

Text book companies and government standards mostly due to military needs created a content crisis where standardization of the curriculum was necessary.  This generation of education led to the model of teaching students in rows, the obedient learner and the standardized assessment.

Similar to the 20th century model our current model sets the standards wether they be CCSS, NGSS, NCSS or whatever still focusing on standardization.  This thinking keeps us in rows and focused on performance on paper/pencil assessment.  

The 21st century model and current brain research shows that students have different needs than they did in the past.  To develop true transferrable knowledge and skill we need to engage students in a different way and elicit new kinds of thinking about curriculum, education, and student-centered learning.

As we continue down this path in the Webster Groves School District I am hopeful to continue to strive to push the envelop of traditional schooling.  Putting student passion, interest, problem, projects and games at the center allows for the personalization of learning.  This diagram above is just the beginning of our journey and will continue to be added upon as we develop more detailed and supportive part of the curriculum.

Personalized Learning for Every Student - What I'm learning...

I'm learning a TON about personalizing learning for every student as my classroom begins to be more and more personalized for each student's individual needs, interests and readiness.


Where I'm working from:

• Utilizing backwards design,
• Having rubrics for each objective,
• Understanding differentiation,
• Understanding growth mindset (more on that later),
• In a standards-based graded classroom,
• In 6th grade science.

What I'm learning:

• Using the phrase: "Acquiring new knowledge" for things like notes and readings makes that process less painful for students
• Using the phrase: "Practicing" for labs, worksheets, and activities makes them more intriguing for students.
• Being able to ask the students: "Are you ready to assess?" and being okay if they say no, is powerful.
• Being able to prescribe specific lessons, notes, readings, activities to improve student performance on specific topics is POWERFUL!
• Hearing my students talk about Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose and understand my role in this process is enlightening for all of us.
• The phrase: "You just need more practice" is a lot less threatening than a poor grade and a you don't know this.
• Without trying, I've set up a growth midset where my students all believe they can achieve the objective and don't stop practicing until they do.
• There are some students that need to sit near me to stay focused.
• Size of the room makes a HUGE difference in the ability to do this style of classroom management.
• Asking students to check in with me, or show me an assignment or quiz after it's complete cuts down on my grading and increases my feedback.
• There are some times lines that students have to wait in while I help another students that needs my attention. (Gotta work around this).
• Students work independently much faster, get more opportunities and are more accurate than when working with me.  At times not to the depth I'm able to take it to though.

What my students are saying:

• I think it was awesome because we could do experiments for making a poster
• I think it was fun that we get to pick our own practice, partners, and what we get to do.
• I liked it, because we had more freedom to do what we needed to do in our own way
• I liked it because we worked at our own pace.
• I liked doing what I want to do when I want do it.
• I liked how we could watch video, practice, and take the test...
• I liked how you could work ahead easier.
• I liked going at your own pace.
• I didn’t like it, partners who said they were going to work go ahead. (Sometimes students want to work with someone without the realization that every student works at their own pace).
• I still kinda needed you to tell me what to do...
• I liked it, but its harder... we really had to read the procedure for the lab instead of you telling us what to do.
• It was harder, I felt off schedule.
• I didn't like it, too easy to get distracted.
• I liked it because with the group i could focus more.
• I liked that I got a lot more stuff done.
• I like getting to choose when we take our tests.
• I liked being able to figure out how much practice we needed.
• I liked how we worked at our own pace.
• I liked how we got to work in groups.
• I liked the schedule.
• I didn’t like having to turn the quiz in to you. (No place to hide!!)
• I didn’t like the organization of the room. ( I need to think about ways to roganize the room.)
• If someone is doing something more interesting it might be distracting. (We had laser pointers out that distracted many 11 year olds.)
• I didn't like people around you distracting you
• I think it's hectic because people were doing different things
• I didn't like how loud the room gets.
• I didn't like how some students were not focused on what they needed to do.
• I liked how everyone was so relaxed and doing what they wanted.
• I got a lot done
• I liked not having to wait for the other person to finish, I could move at my pace.

What's next?

• Students are finishing my curriculum early with classes left to work on a topic of their choice.  Remembering to focus on "Recovering" topics they weren't totally understanding or "Discovering" a new topic that interests them.
• I will post student work created from their personalized learning plans on my Student tech blog located here.
• Collect summative assessment data and compare to a non-personalized environment.
• Continue to develop new activities and lessons to support each learning objective.
• Continue to "flipteach" and record my lectures and labs for students to work at their own pace.
• I'm presenting on this topic with hard data and results at METC in St. Louis.  You should join me!
• E-mail @stumpteacher to see how I'm doing.  Everyone needs a mentor!

Want to read more? Read about how Personalized learning got started in my classroom here!

Top 10 list 5/20/11

10. 10 ways for teachers to collaborate

http://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/10-ways-for-teachers-to-collaborate/

9. Build a home-school connection - There’s an app for that

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/05/want-to-build-home-school-connection.html

8. Cool way to make sounds online

 http://www.beatlab.com/

7. Cool things to do with youtube videos

http://www.jogtheweb.com/run/xR4Bt3pPSkfz/Cool-things-to-do-with-YOUTUBE-videos#1

6. Love this.  Technology just a tool?  Oxygen just an element!

http://www.maggiehosmcgrane.com/2011/05/technology-as-tool-skill-or-goal.html

5. Interesting chart on traditional vs 21st century skills

http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/2011/05/culture-part-ii.html

4. 70 tools in 70 minutes - a great slideshare project

http://www.slideshare.net/langwitches/70-tools-70-minutes?from=ss_embed

3. 50 ways to integrate technology

http://goo.gl/FVHk

2. 5 coolest google search HACKS you didn’t know about

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-coolest-google-search-hacks-realized-existed/

1. How do we prepare kids for jobs we don’t know about yet

http://www.good.is/post/how-do-we-prepare-kids-for-jobs-we-can-t-imagine-yet-teach-imagination/

Videos of the week!

Great book: Patrick Lencioni - THE FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS OF A TEAM

Pale Blue dot

Here’s to the students who refused to be standardized

Howard Gardner on Digital Youth

Should teachers make more money?

http://jeffthomastech.com/blog/?p=10268&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TechThePlunge+%28Tech+the+Plunge%29

Will Richardson, a leader in edtech and his thoughts on the 21st century learner

What can education learn from Hip-Hop

http://socialelearning.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/what-education-should-be-like/

Using Lucid Charts in the classroom

Background

I teach 6th grade science and reading strategies.  With every reading strategy I teach a 21st century skill associated with that strategy.  My reading strategy for this week is making connections between texts.  A text-to-text connection.


Other posts I've done:
Typewith.me
Commenting on a blog
Voki
Infographics
Wallwisher

I have been seeking new ways to visually show making connections outside of pencil and paper and wants to show the connectedness of print, media, and other text based materials.  Then along came Lucid charts.

Lucid charts is best described as a online, FREE, web based, flow chart creator.  It has the capacity to work colaboratively and publishes a number of ways.  So far, to me, it has WAY more capabilities than my little 6th graders can utilize but they loved the flexibility and creativity they were afforded by the program.  I thought it was awesome and the kids thought it was very cool too.  My tech specialist that were watching me use it were so intrigued they got on right away and created an account.  Very cool!

Lesson Plan

• Teach making connections: text-to-self (see the digital versions and student products here)
• Teach making connections: Text-to-text using Lesson 46 in the daybook activity
• Give feedback on daybook lesson
• Provided student an opportunity to demonstrate making connections using the book they are currently reading
• Give feedback on making connections using their book
• Create a flow chart using lucid charts about their day today, set up how we can use this to make connections
• Give feedback on flow chart
• create connections model for students to demonstrate how the connections should be made and provide guidelines
• My model is the image located to the right here->
• Have students make connections using Lucid charts following key provided.

Set up

I had never used lucid charts but heard about if from Larry Ferlazzo's blog.  I'll tell you soemthing, if Larry likes it, I like it.  That's the bottom line.  I jumped right in plaued with it for a couple minutes and had no problem seeing endless possibilities for thsi free service.

• made copies of Lesson 46 in daybook.
• made copies of my model for the final days activities
• Reserved two classes on two days of the computer lab
• Enjoyed watching the creativity flow!

Evidence of student work

This being the first time I completed this task its hard to discuss what and how it would be scored.  

There are two separate entities here to be assessed:

1.  Is the student capable of making connections usin the book they are reading (curriculum item).

2.  Can the student utilize a flowchart creation application to create a visual puzzle of the book and connections they are making.

Student work: (I did notice some of the images didn't translate to the finished product, you'll get the drift if you see a large blank spot, that's where an image was at one time.)

Kolton

Olivia

Chandler
Abby
Austin
Noogie
Samantha
Adeline
Mackenzie
Erica
Aaron
Jack
Ashley
John
Joe
Evan

Just fun!

One of my students even made a flowchart of the movie The Black Swan.  FUN!

Top 10 list for 5/6/11

Top 10 list

10.  Social media doesn’t cause bullying, it catches it

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/04/social-media-doesnt-cause.html

9.  Class size matters ONLY when the teacher does everything.

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-i-learned-recently-in-nyc_08.html

8. SH*T my students write.  Man, I had this idea years ago and should have pounced:

http://shitmystudentswrite.tumblr.com/

7.  The history of the flipped classroom

http://blendedclassroom.blogspot.com/2011/05/history-of-flipped-class.html

6.  A GREAT article in the American Prospect:  The test Generation

http://goo.gl/vCkSB

5.  5 simple web apps to save you time at work

http://mashable.com/2011/04/15/simple-web-apps-productivity/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

4.  Tuesday Night’s edchat was on Web 2.0 tools.  Compiled from around the world here are some resources and how teachers are using them

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1q9m3Dj8zvZL-c99VGH_gh08619wBGngCFCMeUj7RdFc

3.  Innovate my class.  Grant writing process to get what you need to do that idea you’ve been thinking about.  Now what’s your excise for not innovating your instruction?  Quit saying “If only...”

http://innovatemyclass.org/

2.  This stings a little...7 solutions for teachers who want 21st century students

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/04/6-solutions-for-educators-who-want-21st.html

1.  Want to be a GREAT teacher, don’t go to Professional Development!  Got your interest, read this:

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2010/08/want-to-be-great-teacher-dont-go-to-pd.html?spref=tw

Videos of the week

Love this video:  Google docs through the eyes of a student:

Aren’t we BORN to learn.  Think about this video as you line your desks up in rows and set up your classroom procedures.  Fascinating!  How does work and play in your room look?

RSA ANIMATE - Changing education paradigms from Sir Ken Robinson.  REVOLUTIONARY Ideas!

Great info for ALL students.  How to prevent a printing nightmare 

Top 10 list for the week of 3/18/11

The Top 10 list for this week:

10.  Why Formative assessments matter

http://www.21stcenturyfluency.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=1777

9.  Tying incentives to student performance for teachers.  What’s the evidence say?

http://www.danpink.com/archives/2011/03/does-giving-teachers-bonuses-improve-student-performance

(also watch the movie Freakanomics)

8.  Lyn (@L_Hilt) is an AMAZING principal, I’ve mentioned her here a number of times.  I love her thoughts on where we are in education and the homework section really gives me thoughts to chew on

http://lynhilt.com/crossing-the-finish-line/

7.  Don’t have a Twitter account, but want to "SPY" in on what’s being said.  Check this out...

go here http://www.tvviboard.com/ Type in #edchat or #edtech

watch it load and enjoy the resources...

6.  Free assistive reading tools.  This is pretty cool and a great set of resources for writing, reading, and more

http://carlanderson.blogspot.com/2011/03/free-assistive-reading-tools.html

5.  This looks like an awesome resource from the most gifted tech person down to the person who needs help using word/pages.  Check it out

http://teachertrainingvideos.com/

4.  Wallwisher.com, corkboard.me, spaaze.com, Lino it (http://en.linoit.com/) which one is the best...dunno, I like them all!

3.  Can you flip your classroom.  It’s all the rage now for 21st Cenetury learners

http://cybraryman.com/flipclass.html

2.  THIS IS SOOOOOO COOL!!! Making an interactive lesson using YOUTUBE

http://www.knewton.com/blog/edtech/education-edtech/2010/12/15/how-to-make-an-interactive-lesson-using-youtube

1.  Yep! Google WILL do that.  Great presentation on the google tools

http://web20classroom.blogspot.com/2011/03/yep-google-will-do-that.html

Videos of the week

3 who lead, learn and think – 3 great videos…

http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/thinking-and-learning-3-quick-videos-586.php

Pay attention – our students are changing to digital learners…

Top 100, WOW!

WOW!

Special thanks to online degrees for considering and listing my blog for the Top 100.  I am truly grateful and honored to be listed.

Some of who I consider to be the best of the best are on this list.  I am humbled to be in their company.

Please take time to check out the list, add some of them to your reader, you will not be disappointed.

Please pay special attention to @justintarte (Herr tarte), @thenerdyteacher (The Nerdy Teacher), @JPPrez (Bits and Bytes), and @stumpteacher (Stump the Teacher) the coolest Jedi I know.  You will not be disappointed!

ADDENDUM:

Due to recent discussion and blog posts my links and recognition to this list has been removed.  Although the list is comprehensive, the people who put in the time and effort to create and publish the list are just doing their job, I, and many others feel that the motives are less than pure.

I am happy and grateful to be considered.  I am happy to be on the list, the list has brought new people to my blog and a new platform to share with great educators out there.  Thank you to all who support me in the endeavor of collaborating.  I hope that we can find a way to recognize great educators for doing great work and keep the motivation pure.

Until the next time we colaborate....

5 for Friday 1/28/11

A sick day for me this week caused me to be a day behind on scouring the internet for great resources.  It didn't seem to matter though because what I found over the next four days really made up for that missed day.  Google seems to have been pushing out a lot this week they made the list a number of times.

As an aside Google launched Google for education and google apps for education, I'll let you discover how that may impact you since I'm still searching and sifting through these items...

Check out the 5 best resources of the week here:

Google Forms are RIDICULOUS if you aren’t using them, why not?  Here are 62 ways to use google forms….

http://goo.gl/l9aLf

11 Ways Schools Can Be Relevant, Compelling and Effective in the Coming Transformational Years (how are we positioning ourselves, our classrooms and our schools in order to meet these new demands?)

http://www.connectedprincipals.com/archives/2511

Be a BIG thinker here….7 fascinating Education Ideas of the year

http://www.21stcenturyfluency.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=1677

100 Google Search Tricks for the Savviest of students (and teachers) - there are MANY things I didn't know here, glad I found this….I wish I had this as a poster in the computer lab...

http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2011/01/17/100-google-search-tricks-for-the-savviest-of-students/

A couple weeks ago I attended the 2011 Reform Symposium.  It was a educational reform webinar series hosted entirely online.  You can still search twitter for all of the "tweets" about it using hashtag #rscon11.  Archives for the symposium are found on the link below.  Some awesome resources here, check them out, you can attend the whole conference on your own time.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/01/check-out-reform-symposium-archives.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+freetech4teachers/cGEY+(Free+Technology+for+Teachers)

Your Video(s) of the week

Great blog post: 7 Videos ALL teachers should watch, I tend to agree.  One of my friends is giving a professional development session on these 7 videos today.  I'm excited to see his blog post after his teachers watch and discuss them.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/12/holiday-edition-7-videos-all-educators.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+freetech4teachers/cGEY+(Free+Technology+for+Teachers

What happens when you try and teach Facebook?

The answer: You have a great evening with the community.


Last night was our first TechKnight at our school (as an aside Knights are our mascot and we were working with technology, I just didn't want you to think I couldn't spell).




My objective for these TechKnights:

• To communicate and develop strategies to enrich the Kirkwood community in technology skills and resources.

The Lesson

I worked with my wife to develop what we thought we would cover and what were the key features of Facebook.  We opened up the lesson plan for people to comment through twitter and found some other resources through my google reader.


My lesson is a google doc, please feel free to use it, add to it, and share some comments.


The Set up

• Gain administrative support.
• Reserve space ( I used the middle school library)
• Ensure we can unblock Facebook within the district for a period of time.
• Ensure the doors can be unlocked to the school
• Write lesson (above)
• A flipcamera to document the presentation (which I forgot to use)
• Create flipchart of questions and reflection
• Secure activvotes for voting
• Secure laptop cart for those who don't bring a laptop.
• Advertise for 1 week over school announcements and at Mother/Grandmother breakfast.
• Warning to all Facebook friends that we will be viewing "the Wall" so alert them to be careful what they say...

• Have a partner to troubleshoot at the site while the group is instructed by the other person.
• Coffee for the morning after because it's going to be a late night.

Evidence of learning

• At the end of the lesson I assessed whether or not attendees wanted another session of TechKnight
• Participants voted on lesson choices.

What will I do differently next time

• Our district has a difficult security setting where we have to type the letter "s" after the http in order for the page to load properly.  This made for a difficult night.
• The session needed to be divided into beginners, intermediate, and advanced users on three separate nights, or in three separate rooms....
• Have specific objectives for each event.
• Have more publicity and utilize the signboard outside of the school and the district webpage.
• Have a mixture of PCs and Mac's for everyone to work on their native system.
• have people bring their own laptops.
• Communicate objectives over the techKnights more clearly to get the attendees necessary to complete the objective.

Reflection:


It was outstanding!  Everything I wanted it to be and more.  


I've been having this vision of monthly technology lessons publicized to the community for the community with topics chosen by the community.  I figure one hour a month, plus some set up time, is a great investment.  We are communicating values in how our school views the use of technology and creating a technology literate community which may benefit us in the long run of the district.  


I always felt we are in customer service in the education field and felt there is a need.  I'd rather the community come into our buildings, build relationships with us, learn with us, than learn about us and learn somewhere else.


I'll wrap this up with a video that just makes me smile...

8 Shifts needed for the 21st century learner

I watched Will Richardson's video (@willrich45) from MSDC (which was AWESOME) and tried to summ up his overall ideas here.  Links to resources are below:

Overall Ideas:

Networked classroom is very different than the traditional classrooms.

Conversation should change to being about learning, instead of schools.

How is learning changing?

• Scratch – social gaming creation site: http://scratch.mit.edu/

• Teachers CAN come in all shapes and sizes, as long as you can bring them into your world.

• Kids today will never lose their friends (facebook and social networking).

• My kids aren’t going to be living our "old" life.  Kids today have BILLIONS OF OPPORTUNITIES.  We shouldn't filter it or not give them the opportunities.

• Even though NO ONE is asking you to change…..are you changing to a 21st century teacher?

8 Shifts Needed

1. Teach kids to talk to strangers.  Depending on the time/place, it’s not that unsafe.  Kids that get in trouble online, get in trouble off-line.

2. Build a G portfolio – What is your online presence?  Public is the new default.  People WILL be googling you!  http://youropenbook.org/ Put in any phrase, word, idea, person’s name, Should be one of our goals for students to be “googled well” by the time they leave?  www.Brandyourself.com subscribe to to IMPROVE your online presence.

3. Create a Digital Paperchain – 750 pieces of paper at a tech conference.  We need to adjust to a world that DOESN’T rely on paper.  Think GROUPON and Apps. (There's an App for your paper.)


4. Students need to learn information management: 21st century students need to be able to manage analyze and synthesize multiple streams of information.  We live in a world of PULL instead of push, we teach in a world of PUSH.  How can we adjust? (Teaching the Jung blog post).  We need to teach students how to particpate WITH the information.  It can no longer be about content.

5. Kids need to be good crap detectors.  Walter Cronkite’s “and that’s the way it is” doesn’t exist anymore.  You can’t believe everything you see, read, hear, etc.  Howard Reingold (CRAP detection 101 BLOG), who do you trust, who’s an authority.  Social Capital, how valuable are your interactions within a network.  How Google RANKS – amount of links to and from a webpage.

6. Follow your passions.  If you are going into the learning world, follow your passion.  New standards: http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010.  Model for 21st century learner.  provide personalized learning instead of a one-size fits-all curriculum.

7. SHIFT to LEARNing.  It’s not about teaching, it’s about learning.  Learning is not an event it’s something that is ongoing.  It’s NOT about knowing things, it’s about HOW to learn.  Kahn academy mission to provide HIGH-quality education to ANYONE, ANYWHERE!  Learning HAS to be learn how to ….. BEFORE you come to the workshop.  We can’t have people wait for the content in a content rich society.  Value of schools is WHAT DO YOU DO with that knowledge.

Cool resources:

Dweeber, social homework and collaborating tool:  www.dweeber.com

Game playing standardized test prep: http://grockit.com/

8. Solve Problems: Cretively, patiently.  Kids today don’t experience much failure.  We don’t teach kids how to “fail” well.  How can we kids to be okay with ambiguity, struggle, and patience.  “Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally.”  

How will we change?

• Realize BIG change happens incrementally
• We need a growth mindset
• Education needs to be viewed as a process, not an acquisition of content.
• Those who use technology are more likely to advance.

Presentation slides here: tinyurl.com/msdc10

conversation here: todaysmeet.com/msdc10

Video:

MSDC Will Richardson Fall 2010 from msdc-mn on Vimeo.

Impact slides: