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What's Out There? Curricula that Support Essential School Ideas
Sidebars:
How to Analyse a Curriculum Unit or Project
Challenging Children to Learn, and More
Math Programs
The College Board Sets a New, Demanding Pace for the Majority
Systematic Portfolio Assessment? ACT's New Plan
Documents, resources...in the Humanities
In Science, Inquiry-Based Investigations
Across the Curriculum: Frameworks with a Coherent, Student-Centered Emphasis
Helpful Books on Integrating Curricula
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 the fact that most high school students-80 percent, according to national figures-just don't take physics.
If he could just snag kids into experiencing how directly physics related to what they did care about -sports, or the Internet, or cars, or the lottery-he knew he could get them interested.
But textbook courses offered nothing in the way of help; they plodded predictably from forces in the fall to solenoids in the spring, with nary a nod to the young audiences asleep at their desks.
So for the past seven years, this Essential school veteran has spent his nights and weekends devising new ways to engage high school students in doing and thinking deeply about physics. With like-minded colleagues from all over, he won National Science Foundation (NSF) support for a course that would reflect the principles of student as worker, swapping the old sequential skill-and-drill approach for a series of lively investigations into the science of what matters to kids.
Trying out Eisenkraft's ideas at Fox Lane, students presented scientific evidence to the principal that no one's hearing would be damaged by the band at the school dance. They designed a safety device for a bicycle and a sport to play on the moon. "It's not traditional, but it is demanding," their teacher says. "Now kids are learning the concepts because they really feel the need to know."
This year, Eisenkraft's six-book series hit the streets as Active Physics, a six-part series published by a small company called It's About Time and already adopted by Philadelphia, Detroit, and Miami. At Fox Lane, the number of students taking physics, from ninth grade up through senior year, has tripled with the new approach.
As much as anything, this story reveals the impact that over a decade of Essential schooling has begun to have on the materials available to teachers. Spurred by the work of national disciplinary organizations and funded by the National Science Foundation and other forward-looking groups, more curriculum and assessment is steadily emerging that supports the student-centered, inquiry-based Common Principles that Theodore R. Sizer first laid out in 1984.
And though the wheels of the giant textbook and testing industries grind slowly and creep only with utmost caution away from their safe standby pablum, they are no longer the only game in town. The Internet has provided a nimble new way for teachers to share their own lively ideas, borrow from others, and compare their students' work to that from other places.
At Piner High School in Santa Rosa, California, where teachers in "small learning communities" have been creating curricula for years, Kathy Juarez hops on line with an "interdisciplinary themed instruction" discussion group based at the Appalachia Regional Educational Laboratory in West Virginia (iti@ael.org) and offers her list of Shakespearean insults to a teacher in Vermont who needs a fresh way to teach "Romeo and Juliet." Some- one else recommends a teacher-created curriculum called "Shakespeare Set Free," available through the Folger Shakespeare Library (www.shakespeare-etc.org or call 202-675-0364). By the time the week is through, the Vermont teacher has a unit he can adapt to his class, and the suggestions have made their way across cyberspace to uncounted more Essential school classrooms.
In New York City, students at Satellite Academy talk with Holocaust survivors, who are visiting the school with director Steven Spiel-berg to launch his new CD-ROM series, an oral history of that time. Also on the scene is staff from Facing History and Ourselves, a nonprofit developer of curricular materials on racism, genocide, and democratic participation, which began in the 1970s with support from the Brookline, Massachusetts high school once headed by former CES Schools Director Bob McCarthy. Now widely used in Essential school humanities classes around the country, the group's materials will also support the Spielberg CDs.
What's Out There?
Despite the slew of "standards" documents generated in the past decade by states, districts, and disciplinary organizations, most teachers are on their own when it comes to lining up a curriculum that meets those sweeping goals. If they are also going against the prevailing winds of "coverage"-looking toward more active student inquiry, or a case study approach that can buttress a "less is more" philosophy, or heterogeneously grouped classes-they have an even harder task. If the school administration allows them a choice of materials at all, they are lucky. They must struggle to win time and money to learn to use new approaches and materials effectively. Finally, unless the new curricula have authentic assessments entwined in their day-to-day work, teachers face sabotage in the form of outside tests that do not reflect their priorities.
Still, those with time and energy to look into "what's out there" will discover promising new curriculum and assessment materials that fall into several rough categories:
- Whole-school programs, such as the Paideia Plan, International Baccalaureate's Middle Years Program, or ACT's Passport portfolio system. These do not consist of curricular materials per se, but rather offer a framework within which teachers construct class work; they may come with a system in which outside assessors review and validate a percentage of the assessments made by classroom teachers.
- Cross-curricular "approaches" to instruction like Paideia, Expeditionary Learning, or Foxfire, which enrich or dovetail with existing curricula.
- Courses of study in one or more particular fields, sometimes accompanied by textbooks (as with "integrated math and science"), and sometimes encouraging a choice of materials but supplying outside assessments
(as with the College Board's Pacesetter curricula in English, Spanish, and math).
- Resource kits, modules, or curriculum "bundles," often in multi-media form, that can assist in shaping a unit, term, or year's study, such as those from the Developmental Studies Center, History Alive, the Getty Institute for Education and the Arts, Terc, or educational software companies like Sunburst or Tom Snyder Productions.
- Lesson plans, reading lists, or materials posted on the Internet by teachers, scholars, professional organizations like the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), government agencies like NASA or the Library of Congress, universities, or ad hoc groups.
- Large-scale assessment systems based on portfolio entries or narrative observations (like ACT's Passport portfolio system, the California Learning Record, and the Primary Language Record
[see HORACE, Volume 13, No. 2]) or open-ended performance assessments, like Milwaukee's district assessment in math or Vermont's portfolio program.
Many of the above options offer substantial support for teachers during the summer or school year, which research shows is critical to their success in practice. In another option for teachers who prefer to develop their curriculum from the ground up, other summer institutes (like the Woodrow Wilson Leadership Program or the Mt. Holyoke Summer Math Program)
bring teachers together for coaching and practice. And some schools, like those in the Atlas Communities
(see page 10), have instituted summer sessions in which teachers prepare and critique new curricula.
Finally, the professional networks that develop among Essential school teachers both formally and informally-face to face through Centers workshops and "critical friends" or study groups, or on line via list-serve discussion groups sponsored by CES and others-offer a smorgasbord of curriculum possibilities that many teachers then make their own. At Turner Technical High School in Miami, Pedro Bermudez borrowed a newspaper unit created by middle school teacher Rick Casey in New York's Croton-Harmon district, then turned it into an entire course that integrated U.S. history with technology and language arts. At Mission Hill School in Roxbury, Massachusetts, CES Vice-Chair Deborah Meier introduced a middle-school curriculum called "The Peopling of the U.S.A.," which she brought with her from Central Park East Secondary School. And a set of pioneering projects called "City Works"
(forthcoming from New Press), which had ninth-grade students in Cambridge, Massachusetts exploring their neighborhood while learning academic subjects, is spreading to some of the Big Picture's New Urban High Schools, a consortium of six model school-to-work schools, five of which are Coalition members.
Partners in Development
In addition, the fertile ground of Essential schools has attracted new partnerships between innovative teachers and those developing classroom materials to support them. Like Arthur Eisenkraft, other Essential school teachers have found themselves in demand because they are already creating curricula that deserve a wider audience. Terc, a curriculum developer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, won Scott Eddleman away from his job teaching community- based science at Maine's Noble High School to work on a series of integrated math and science materials situated in workplace contexts, for example.
Sometimes the impetus comes from the other direction, as when a group of young Stanford-trained history teachers, irritated by the conventional texts on their desks, created their own company to publish History Alive, a collection of theme-based binders stuffed with art, maps, simulation activities, and other resources.
("I don't take it hook, line, and sinker," says Carrie Brennan, who has used the materials at Catalina Foothills High School in Tucson, Arizona, "but it's definitely helpful, if only as a springboard for new ideas.")
Or sometimes Essential schools help field-test new curriculum projects in their early stages. The Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP), developed at the University of California in Berkeley with support from the National Science Foundation, found an eager audience in Essential schools like Fenway Middle College High School in Boston and California's Piner High School, which have now used it long enough to see the first graduates go on to college. In Michigan, Essential schools helped pilot Core-Plus, a high school math curriculum that came out of an NSF partnership with Western Michigan University, and Connected Math, a similar project for the middle school years.
Curriculum & Learning
So with all this promising material, has the magic bullet come for schools that aim for greater student understanding? Once innovative curricula get to the desks of teachers and students, do they work?
Not without several other critical pieces in place, according to important research by Paul Berman and Milbrey McLaughlin in the 1977 study ("Factors affecting implementation and continuation")
they wrote for the Rand Corporation after a wave of federally funded "innovations" like "new math" swept the nation like so many new feed grains in the post-Sputnik 1960s.
If people in schools believe that knowledge can simply be transferred
-turned from research data into simplified practices, moved from the teacher's guide into the minds of students-they will end up putting new curriculum materials back on the shelf without much to show for them, Yale's Seymour Sarason agrees in his classic book, The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change (revised 1996, Teachers College Press).
For any new way of teaching to "work" with students, a tremendous amount of support and reflection must accompany it, a well-established body of research beginning in the 1970s has made clear. Indeed, the success of any curriculum may depend less on its design and more on teachers' own beliefs about how learning happens, both for themselves and for the individual students they teach.
And their ability to look at ready-made curricula critically-not to "shop" for it as a neutral tool that determines when, what, and how they teach-can greatly affect how equitable are the opportunities for students to learn well.
Whose knowledge does the curriculum represent, Essential school teachers are increasingly asking, and what ideologies underlie that knowledge? Whose voices are privileged, and whose absent? What are the absent voices saying?
This kind of question often prompts teachers to seek out multicultural materials in the humanities, to reflect the diverse backgrounds of their students. But it can go further, to probe not just different motivations to learn but the different ways that students construct meaning.
One young California teacher new to a large urban high school, for instance, told of selecting from her department's three approved geometry texts the one book relying primarily on inductive reasoning, not deductive proofs. Not a good idea, her colleagues advised, since she would be teaching the lowest level of students. Believing that it would serve those students even better, she stuck with her decision, and her students were soon outdoing all previous expectations.
Curriculum As Inquiry Cycle
Rather than allowing curriculum to predetermine where students are and how they learn, teachers can practice a cycle of inquiry that uses curricular materials only as a resource, not as a "framework." "No matter how good the materials are, they don't work if I'm not totally tuned in to the minds of my students," says Heather Douglas, an Essential school teacher helping coach a math-science network of schools at Boston's Center for Collaborative Education. "Before I even go looking around for resources, I need to recognize what kind of experience a kid needs to move him to the next step."
First, for example, the teacher might observe what conceptual models her students already hold. ("A big boat will sink and a little boat will float.") Then she might seek out materials that will provoke an activity. (The class makes boats of different sizes and shapes and tries floating them in water.) Using that activity to call forth new conceptual models ("Some big boats float and some little boats sink"), she then completes the cycle as students come up with new questions. ("What floats and what sinks?")
In a scenario like this, the most useful prepared materials might well be the kind of inexpensive kits prepared by the University of California's Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley, known as Great Experiments in Math and Science
(Gems), or the Terc investigations, which provide no textbooks but rather teacher guides and courses. "You could hang these kits in a "standards framework,' says one teacher who has used them, "in order to "get the kids' to do this or that. But it's better to just let kids explore with them, then to discover and reflect together on what they experience."
Looked at this way, curriculum materials can only ignite new learning if teachers first enter into a relationship with both what they teach and who they teach. No matter how many great ideas are on the shelf, they don't start making a difference until students and teachers bring them alive through their daily encounters-not just in class but in every question, every decision, every demonstration of what they understand and what they don't. There's a reason that the word curriculum comes from the Latin verb for "run" or "course"-it is not a package of facts and activities, but a dynamic series of events, a river of learning that carries us all, sometimes unpredictably, to a new place. And as Essential schools consider the increasing array of navigational tools available to them, they may be charting a valuable new map.
How to analyse a curriculum unit or project
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'Neighbor, Doctor, Senator, and Friend': Challenging Children to Learn, and More:
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 the social, ethical, and emotional growth of the child.
In math class, that means grouping students in twos and fours to investigate problems that have multiple solutions, and asking them to talk and write about their thinking. Not only does students' "number sense,"problem-solving, and mathematical reasoning improve with the approach, a DSC study showed, but their sense of confidence and enjoyment also rises significantly.
In reading class, the DSC approach uses 200 unabridged, original works of literature to build students' skills as the same time as their values of caring, responsibility, and respect. Its literary themes, questions, and activities prompt kids to talk and write about the meaning they find in reading, and to compare it with the meaning others find, both in class and at home.
In addition, DSC publishes materials aimed at building community in the classroom and across the school and home front. One six-book set offers elementary school teachers and parents simple ways to build partnerships around children through "homeside," not just "schoolside," activities.
The link with the Ten Common Principles is clear: using minds well and acting with decency. "We aim to promote each child's full development into the kind of person anyone would want for a neighbor, doctor, senator, or friend," says DSC president Eric Schapps. A new partnership is currently on the drawing boards between DSC and Essential elementary schools and Centers, which seeks to augment the efforts of each group with the expertise and experience of the other.
For more information, contact the Developmental Studies Center, 2000 Embarcadero, Suite 305, Oakland, CA 94606-5300; tel. 510-533-0213; fax 510-464-3670; Web address: http://www.devstu.org/.
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Worth Checking Out: Math Programs Rooted in Applications Find Support from NSF and Schools
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 have argued against a traditional "march to calculus" and for a new emphasis on data analysis, problem solving, reasoning, communication, and mathematical modeling of real-
world situations. The 1990s have seen a sustained effort to develop new curriculum that would support that view, including many projects funded in part by the National Science Foundation , and a crop of offerings from Education Development Center, the Developmental Studies Center, Terc, and various other nonprofit groups. Those that follow have been suggested by Essential schools.
K-8 Math Curriculum
Investigations in Number, Data, and Space, excellent stand-alone units developed at TERC (tel.: 617-547-0430); Dale Seymour Publications, tel.: 800-872-1100
(www.aw.com/dsp/).
Cooperative Mathematics Project: Number Power, a set of teacher resource books for grades K?6 each containing three replacement units with 8?10 lessons each. (See sidebar, page 3.) Developmental Studies Center; tel.: 800-666-7270 or 510-533-0213
(www.viaweb.com/devstu/numpow.html).
TIMS (Teaching Integrated Math and Science, Math Trailblazers), by Phil Wagreich, University of Illinois at Chicago; Kendall/Hunt Publishing (tel.: 800-542-6657).
Teaching to the Big Ideas, Dale Seymour Publications, tel.: 800-872-1100 (www.aw.com/dsp/)
The Connected Mathematics Project (grades 6 through 8). A problem-centered curriculum developed at Michigan State University, the University of Maryland, and the University of North Carolina. Key math concepts embedded in applications calling on technology. Summer seminars for teachers. Dale Seymour Publications, tel.: 800-872-1100; http://www.math.msu.edu/cmp/
Middle-school Math through Applications Project (MMAP). Developed by the Institute for Research on Learning at Stanford University, this applications-based curriculum comes with its own software aimed at introducing math concepts in alternative ways. Can be used as replacement units or a whole course. (Web address: http://www.irl.org/mmap/)
High School Math Curriculum
ARISE (Applications/Reform in Secondary Education Mathematics): Modeling Our World uses realistic contemporary problems and themes to draw forth mathematical concepts in a mathematically sophisticated three-year high program (fourth year in development)
that can be followed with a year of discrete math, statistics, or one of the new reform-minded calculus courses. Support seminars for teachers.
(South-Western Publishers, 1-800-824- 5179)
Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP) offers a three-year, problem-driven course of study integrating topics in algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and precalculus with the study of statistics and probability, data analysis, and quantitative reasoning. Summer training for teachers. (Key Curriculum Press, tel.: 800-541-2442; or IMP, tel.: 888-628-4467, Web address: http://www.mathimp.org/)
Core-Plus Mathematics Project (CPMP). A three-year integrated mathematics curriculum, plus a fourth-year course (in development)
for college-bound students. Features strands of algebra and functions, geometry and trigonometry, statistics and probability, and discrete mathematics connected by themes, common topics, and modes of thinking. Support workshops for teachers. (Janson Publications, tel.: 800-322-6284; Web address: www.teleport.com/
~cgrether/resource/curriculum/connected. html)
On-Line Curriculum Resources
Practical Uses of Math and Science (PUMAS)
offers examples to help pre-college teachers enrich their presentation of topics in math and science, as well as comments by participating teachers on how well they have worked. Examples can be searched by difficulty level, grade level, subject, or curriculum benchmarks.
(http://pumas. jpl. nasa.gov)
The Math Forum at Swarthmore College is a rich online source of classroom materials, interactive math software, and discourse with other math educators at all levels, including a question-and-answer service. Funded in part by the National Science Foundation.
(Tel.: 800-756-7823; http://forum.swarthmore.edu/)
Note: NSF-sponsored math curriculum at all levels is described on the Web site http://www.teleport.com/
~cgrether/resource/curriculum/nsfmath.html. The Education Development Center also offers upcoming seminars in Atlanta, Boston, the Midwest, and the Southwest at which teachers can learn more about all 13 new NSF-sponsored curricula. (For information, call 800-332-2429.)
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Worth Checking Out: The College Board Sets a New, Demanding Pace for the Majority
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 dovetail with individual "essential questions" or adapt to other school contexts and priorities.
The Pacesetter program consists of fourth-year high school courses in mathematics and English, and a third-level course in Spanish, with hopes for more levels and subjects in the future. But along with the challenging and engaging alternatives to conventional curriculum that arrive in the six-unit teacher guide and student workbooks, it offers substantial and sustained teacher development
(for a per-teacher fee of $1400 to $2100); and the lure of a national culminating assessment, scored like the AP exam
(and not rank- ordered)
for $20 a student.
The English course materials emphasize the use of a variety of "texts"
(not textbooks), in writing and in other media, to identify and understand different "voices" and the cultures they represent. Influenced by the groundbreaking work of Brown University professor Robert Scholes, who co-chaired its design team, the curriculum also aims for students to synthesize their earlier learning and link it to a post-graduation "life plan." An independent study of its use in several districts found that reading and writing skills of students did improve significantly with Pacesetter, as measured by questions from the NAEP reading tests and by student essay writing on an AP test item.
Pacesetter's six pre-calculus units-all focused around using functions to mathematically model real-world contexts from the arts to sports, transportation, and the lottery-are intended to follow any Algebra 2 curriculum, and emphasize the problem solving, reasoning, communicating, and real-world connections set forth in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
(NCTM) standards. The Spanish course, intended for the third-level student, combines the study of language and culture and can be tailored to the community's individual profile. It can directly precede the AP Spanish course for students who are continuing their study of Spanish.
For more information, contact Pacesetter at the College Board, 45 Columbus Avenue, New York, NY 10023; tel.: 800-416-5137.
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Worth Checking Out: Systematic Portfolio Assessment? ACT's New Plan
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 College Testing (ACT), in its new large-scale portfolio assessment system in three high school areas: English language arts, mathematics, and science. (Social studies and an interdisciplinary category are in a pilot stage.)
The program, known as Passport, includes professional development
(in school and off-site), outside validation of teachers' assessments, thoughtful but flexible performance tasks that adapt easily to a school's curricular priorities and course descriptions, scoring rubrics tied to well-regarded national standards in each field, exemplars and "anchor papers" showing student work at different levels, narrative-style assessments, and an "improvement summary" that tracks a student's progress over the high school years. To make collecting and organizing portfolios simpler and more consistent, Passport also provides the actual entry folders, checklists, cover sheets, and portfolio envelopes that students use throughout the year. Costs depend on what services schools use; a school with 400 students and 20 teachers that used the system in all three curriculum areas would end up paying about $22 per student, assuming teachers scored most portfolios on site and sent only 10 percent to ACT for validation.
Passport divides each subject area into ten or more categories of work, of which teachers choose five to include in the portfolio each year. For Essential school teachers who create their own curriculum, the method can help in aligning their assignments with a set of chosen learning goals. And because teachers can either use suggested assignments, adapt them, or create their own, the categories are highly adaptable to any level or particular course choices. For example:
In Language Arts
* Business and Technical Writing
* Explanation, Analysis, Evaluation
* Persuasive Writing
* Poetry
* Relating a Personal Experience
* Research and Investigative Writing
* Response to a Literary Text
* Short Story/Drama
* Writing about Uses of Language
* Writing a Review of the Arts or Media
In Mathematics
* Analyzing Data
* Another Class
* Challenging Problem
* Collecting and Analyzing Data
* Comparing Notions
* Connections
* Consumer Beware
* From Your Own Experience
* Logical Argument
* Multiple Methods
* Technology
In Science
* Literature Review and Evaluation
* Historical Perspective
* Societal Context of Science
* Applications
* Integrating Sciences
* Evaluating Scientific Claims
* Laboratory Observation
* Laboratory Experiment
* Design a Study
* Design and Perform a Study
It can take years of protracted and painful experiments for a school to develop a coherent system of reliable portfolio assessment, to say nothing of the school culture that can support it. If a school can agree that it wants to try, in one area or across the board, Passport offers a leg up on the more time-consuming aspects of the task, as well as providing the outside support many teachers will need.
For more information, contact Passport at ACT, P.O. Box 168, Iowa City, Iowa 52244- 9946; tel. 800-498-6480; e-mail donovan@act.org; Web address: www.act.org.
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Worth Checking Out: Documents, Resources, Lessons, Inspiration in the Arts and Humanities
* 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; www.teachtci.com)
* Facing History and Ourselves offers materials and workshops studying racism, prejudice, and antisemitism, in the context of the history and lessons of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, to help middle and high school students connect history and their own moral choices.
(16 Hurd Road,Brookline, MA 02146-6919; tel.: 617-232-1595; fax 617-232-0281; Web address: www.facing.org)
* The American Social History Project produces curriculum materials for high school history, including Freedom's Unfinished Revolution and Who Built America? Many New York Essential schools have participated in its programs linking the print, video and multimedia materials, and scholars of the Center for Media and Learning to classrooms.
(99 Hudson Street, 3rd floor; New York, NY 10013; tel.: 212-966-4248 x201; fax: 212-966-
4589; Web address: http://spanky.osc.cuny.edu/~ashp/links.html)
* The Library of Congress American Memory digital archive makes available primary materials of all kinds on the Web, including documents, photographs, music, drawings, pamphlets, oral history transcripts, and recorded speeches. Educators can search for curricular support in collections like the Afro-American Pamphlets (1818-1907), the Carl van Vechten photographs of the Harlem Renaissance era, documents from the Continental Congress, sound recordings of speeches by American leaders, and the history of women's suffrage. (Web address: www.loc.gov)
* U.S. Historical Documents. From the Federalist Papers to Supreme Court decisions, teachers can search a large collection of historical documents, speeches, and addresses from the history of the United States at http://w3.one.net/
~mweiler/ushda/ushda.htm. Another excellent of (mostly U.S.)
historical documents, from the Magna Carta and the Iroquois Constitution to the latest State of the Union address, can be found at The University of Oklahoma Law Center Web site (http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/).
* The New York Times Learning Network, with Bank Street College of Education, offers daily lesson plans for middle and high school that use news items to explore issues in history, current events and social studies, language arts, the arts, math and science, and technology. (Web address: www.nytimes. com/learning /index.html)
* National Writing Project. A school-university network that brings teachers of all levels together to work on writing across the curriculum, examining successful practices and new developments from a variety of sources. Local and state chapters offer sustained professional development opportunities.
(Web address: www-gse.berkeley.edu/
Research/NWP/nwp.html)
* Getty Education Institute for Education in the Arts sponsors six Regional Institutes that help teachers of all subjects use the arts as a way of transforming whole schools. Programs help with curriculum development and arts instruction across the curriculum; model units, reproductions, materials, and online networking are available.
(1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 600, Los Angeles, CA 90049-1683; Web address: www.artsednet.getty.edu)
* National Council of Teachers of English
(NCTE) offers ongoing conversations from its Web site where teachers can trade ideas about teaching and assessment, class activities, home activities, composition, literature, whole language, and much more. (Web address: www.ncte.org/teach/)
*
Discovery Channel School. A wealth of television programming on subjects from history to science is organized here and linked to thoughtful lesson plans, downloadable primary source readings, and more. (Web address: http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/subjects/k-12.html). PBS Teacher Source
(http://www.pbs.org/teachersource)
has comparable offerings from public television's storehouse.
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Worth Checking Out: In Science, Inquiry-Based Investigations
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 curriculum emphasizing investigations in real-world contexts.
(See page 1.) (It's About Time, 914-273-2233; http://www.its-about-time.com/AP1a.html)
Insights in Biology, high school units focusing on inquiry and process skills including investigation and analysis, modeling, connections, and a variety of teaching and assessment methods.
(Kendall/Hunt, 800-542-6657)
PRIME Science, for grades 6-10, a context-based, activity-driven science program integrating biology, chemistry, earth and space science, and physics, with each major subject revisited and extended in every grade. Developed with NSF funding at the University of California, Berkeley, with the University of York, England.
(Kendall/Hunt, 800-542-6657)
ChemCom, an alternative high school chemistry course emphasizing chemistry in the community; more organic chemistry, biochemistry, industrial, and environmental chemistry and less physical chemistry. Comparable courses in biology and earth science are in development.
(Kendall/Hunt, 800-542-6657)
Event-Based Science
(EBS): Earth Science. These inquiry-based middle-school curriculum modules use readings, media reports, and role-playing as students investigate events like oil spills, epidemics, fraud, hurricanes, volcanos, and the like. (Dale Seymour Publications, 800- 872-1100; Web address: www.mcps.k12.md.us/
departments/eventscience)
Science Education for Public Understanding Program (SEPUP). These year-long middle-
and high-school courses supply activities and materials to investigate how science and technology interact with people and the environment. (Addison-Wesley, 800-552-2259)
Foundations and Challenges to Encourage Technology-based Education (FACETS). These 24 middle-school modules integrate life, physical, and earth science; developed by the American Chemical Society with NSF funding. (Kendall/Hunt, 800-542-6657)
Great Explorations in Math and Science
(GEMS) includes more than 50 teachers guides and handbooks for preschool through grade 10, comprising activity-based units designed to teach key science and math concepts. (Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley, CA; tel.: 510- 642-7771; Web address: http://www.lhs.berkeley.edu/)
Working to Learn, a series of high-school-level projects creating closer links between science, technology, and work (TERC, 2067 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge MA 02140; tel.: 617-547-0430; Web address: http://wtl.terc.edu/
About_WTL.html); and Investigations, elementary-level inquiry-based modules
(Dale Seymour, 800-872-1100).
A Portable Action Lab, a guide to creating integrated projects involving high school students in health care careers; six examples of actual projects. (Jobs for the Future, 88 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02110; tel.: 617-728-4446; www.jff.org)
For guides to evaluating science curriculum, write the National Science Resources Center, Arts & Industries Blgd, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560.
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Worth Checking Out: Across the Curriculum: Frameworks with a Coherent, Student-Centered Emphasis
* 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.) Its curriculum framework asks all teachers in all courses and at all grade levels to teach and assess a set of essential skills, including basic skills (reading, writing, and computation/math)
and higher-order thinking skills (analytical reading, data collection and analysis, speaking and listening). Members of the local community then help determine what other skills they want students to have and together develop standards of performance at each level. Whole-faculty study groups convene regularly for research, planning, demonstration, practice, and reflection.
(Web address: www.naschools. org/schools_p_atlas.html)
* The Paideia Plan. Created in 1982 by Mortimer Adler and the Paideia Group, this 12-year curriculum framework uses a combination of didactic instruction; coaching, exercises, and supervised practice; and Socratic questioning and discussion of core readings. Not a blueprint but a philosophy and process, it asks individual schools to craft the details themselves; but it supports block scheduling, integration of learning styles, cooperative learning, and interdisciplinary unit planning. A Web site provides access to copyright-free seminar texts and other resources; substantial professional development is available.
(University of North Carolina School of Education, Campus Box 8045, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599-8045; tel.: (919) 962-7379; e-mail: npc@unc.edu; Web address: www.unc.edu/depts/ed/
cel-paideia.html)
* Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound, a network of schools whose approach is based on multidisciplinary and project-based learning expeditions including strong intellectual, service, self-discovery, and physical dimensions.
(122 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; tel.: 617-576-1260; fax: 617- 576-1340; Web address: http://hugse1. harvard.edu/ ~elob/index.htm)
*
International Baccalaureate
(IB) Middle Years Program. This five-year curriculum framework for students age 11?16 has much in common with Essential School ideas, and can be adapted to different school contexts. (Following it with the IB Diploma Program in grades 11 and 12 is not required.) The Middle Years Program (MYP)
emphasizes interrelated knowledge, intercultural awareness, communication in two languages, and the student's intellectual and social development. Five common themes link the academic subjects across five years: study skills; community service; health and social education; the environment; and "man the maker," which explores "creative and inventive genius." Schools decide how to allocate time to eight academic subject groups; an independent personal project culminates the course of study. Teachers use IB criteria to assess student portfolios, and IB validates local assessments by a process of external moderation; there are no external exams for MYP. All participating schools are visited and evaluated at least once during the five-year teaching cycle; self-study is required. (200 Madison Avenue, Suite 2007, New York, NY 10016; tel.: 212-696-4464; e-mail: ibna@ibo.org)
* Creative Learning Exchange is an informal network of primary and secondary schools with a discovery-based, learner-centered view of education, centered on "systems education." Teachers contribute lesson plans and computer models; other materials and workshops also available.
(1 Keefe Road, Acton, MA 01720; tel.: 508-287-0070; fax: 508- 287-0080; email: stuntzln@tiac.net; Web address: http://
sysdyn.mit.edu/cle)
* Connections+. Managed by the Mid-Continent Regional Educational Laboratory (Mcrel), this excellent Internet site links teachers at all levels with lesson plans, activities, curriculum resources across the curriculum, organized by content area and linked to standards and benchmarks and supplemental online information.
(Web address: www.mcrel. org/connect/plus/index.html)
* Foxfire. Grounded in experiential education ideas and learner-centered, democratic classrooms that connect students' learning to their community lives, the Foxfire Teacher Outreach program coordinates networks around the country through offices in Rabun County, Georgia.
(Tel.: 706-746-0541)
* The VIA Book. Describes and analyzes curriculum units integrating rigorous and engaging vocational and academic instruction. A thoughtful sourcebook for teachers developing work-based curriculum. (The Big Picture, 118 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA 02139; tel.: 617-492-5335)
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Helpful Books on Integrating Curricula
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, WV: 1995.
Clarke, John H., and Agne, Russell M,
Interdisciplinary High School Teaching: Strategies for Integrated Learning. Allyn and Bacon, Reading, MA: 1997.
Fogarty, Robin, The Mindful School: How to Integrate the Curricula. Skylight Publishing, Palatine, IL: 1991.
Jacobs, Heidi Hayes, Editor, Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, VA: 1989.
Katz, Lilian G., Chard, S., Engaging Children's Minds: The Project Approach. Ablex Press, Norwood, NJ: 1989.
Levy, Steven, Starting from Scratch: One Classroom Builds Its Own Curriculum. Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH: 1996.
Springer, Mark, Watershed:
A Successful Voyage Into Integrative Learning. National Middle School Association, Columbus, OH: 1994.
Stevens, Robert L.,
Gavels to Gravestones: Seven Middle School Social Studies Activities.
New England League of Middle Schools, Topsfield, MA: 1990.
Stevenson, Chris, and Carr, Judy F., Editors,
Integrated Studies in the Middle Grades: "Dancing Through Walls." Teachers College Press, New York: 1993.
Tchudi, Stephen, and Lafer, Stephen, The Interdisciplinary Teacher's Handbook: Integrated Teaching Across the Curriculum. Boynton/Cook, Portsmouth, NH: 1996.
Vars, Gordon F.,
Interdisciplinary Teaching: Why and How. National Middle School Association, Columbus, OH: 1993.
Wigginton, Eliot, Sometimes a Shining Moment: The Foxfire Experience.
Anchor Books, Garden City, NY: 1985.
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Price: $5
Code: H15:2
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This resource last updated: May 14, 2002
Database Information:
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Source: Horace. Vol. 15, #2. Nov. 1998.
Publication Year: 1998
Publisher: CES National
Type: Horace Feature, Horace Sidebar
School Level: All
Issue: 15.2
Focus Area: Classroom Practice
STRAND: Classroom Practice: curriculum
Curriculum: Projects & Units, Subject Integration, Problem-based Learning
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