AN Integrated Approach
Each year I take time to get to know my students and discover what curricular topic best reflects their strengths, their interests, and their spirit as a whole. Curricula is designed to help students recognize, develop, and make automatic the basic investigatory strategies of observation and interview, supports the development of critical and abstract thinking skills, and employs the full range of academic disciplines to create a meaningful learning experience.
the following examples of curricula were developed and implemented in classrooms with students ranging between the ages of four and seven years-old.
Who We Are, Who We Grow Up To be: A study of the self
An invitation to be interviewed by students.
Thinking about the essential question, What makes you, You?, this classroom of big thinkers investigated the similarities and differences that illuminate their connected experience and also reflect their unique characteristics and individuality. Students researched one another, thinking deeply about their own strengths and interests, and honing their skills as interviewers and listeners. As they expanded their investigation to include family and other community members, students learned to gather, organize, interpret, compare, and communicate data. Ultimately, these students shifted their investigation from the here & now into a futuristic journey that had them considering who they thought they might grow up to be and how they would plan to involve themselves as positive and influential community members. This class produced two full-length books, the first, a richly detailed and personal rewrite of Margaret Wise Brown's, The Important Book, and the second, titled Growing Up: Changing the World , a book about whom they wish to become as grown-ups.
"When I Grow Up." Culminating Project. Grown-Up Self-Portrait Puppets & Student Authored and Illustrated Books.
Here & Now Self-Portrait Puppets. These accompanied each personal narrative included in Who We Are: The 5/6s Important Book a class rewrite of Margaret Wise Brown's, The Important Book.
THE LAB: an outdoor s.t.e.a.m. classroom
A classroom community of strong mathematicians, creative problem solvers, and builders inspired a dynamic curriculum defined by design, engineering, and construction. Students studied a range of learning environments and worked collaboratively to develop a new learning space for our campus. By considering big questions such as, How do you think our learning environment/classroom supports us as learners? What types of structures and spaces can help us learn better? Do you think we all learn in the same way? and What do you think would improve the learning environment at our school?, students explored the similarities and differences inherent in their needs as learners, interviewed the faculty and students, and brainstormed new learning spaces that would be beneficial to the school community. The Lab honored the strengths of this analytical group of students and supported their ability to give back to our larger school community. Experiences included interviews and visits with architects, designers, builders, engineers, Habitat for Humanity, and involved visits to the local hardware in search of creative inspiration. Students developed surveys for fellow students and faculty, developed maps of campus, built models of proposed learning tools, and communicated with families, businesses, and local organizations about the donation of construction materials, and spent plenty of time designing, editing and dreaming.
Collaborative drafting process and construction of one of the five elements, the "Observation Benches", that this class designed and built as their culminating project, "The Lab: An Outdoor S.T.E.A.M. Classroom".
Community: supporting our needs & wants
Looking to the world immediately in our vicinity, students thought about what "community" means. From the classroom, to the family, to the school, and out in the places we live, students considered how humans (and other animals) work together to create and design communities that meet the needs and the wants of the people within them. Essential questions include, What is a community? Why do you think we create communities? and How do you think a community reflects and supports the needs and wants of the people within it? Through connected field trips, interviews and the use of a broad range of materials, students had boundless opportunity to reflect upon their investigations, build connections, and ask new questions, delve deeper into their understandings, and make meaningful connections that brought to light the interdependence and the interconnectedness of the human experience. This curriculum encouraged an understanding of how people come together to make decisions that benefit and support the community as a whole. The year-long study culminated with the students planning and building their own model community that met the needs and wants of the people whom they imagined might live there. Through field trips, meetings, interviews, and book research, students explored local organizations and businesses and service providers before deciding what they considered to be necessary elements for their planned community. They researched and then designed the interiors and exteriors of their respective spaces working with wood, clay, cardboard, fabric, paint and other materials to create all of the large and small details necessary to represent those spaces.
"Geopolopolis, A Model Community: Supporting Our Needs & Wants." Culminating Project.
Kids Corner Market: Working Together as a Community
The Kids Corner Market project evolved naturally out of the combination of our Community and Change-Maker studies and balanced the students' goal to raise money and give back with their hopes of creating a special event for their school. These students were rewarded for their community-mindedness and respectful, curious approach to investigating local businesses when one business owner invited them to run their market out of his natural grocery store. He cleared shelves to make room for the products they had created and in doing so offered them the most authentic possible experience of setting up a business, marketing, and working with real customers. What a gift! To prepare themselves for the mathematical challenge of running the market, these student chose to support their daily practice of counting and making change by organizing a Penny Drive.
Invitations to support the Penny Drive and Kids Corner Market.
CHANGE-MAKERS
Food Justice & Security Study. READ THE BOOK!
Evolving each year, and responsive to each new classroom community, the Change Maker curriculum is the only curricular constant from year to year. It is designed to encourage community mindedness, raise their awareness of social justice issues, and supports students in recognizing the ways in which they can positively impact the world around them. Students consider the work that they, their families, friends, teachers, community organizations, and historical figures do/have done to improve their communities. Students balance the differences between needs and wants, clarify their definition of their own needs, and grow cognizant of the basic human needs that are universal to the survival and comfort of all people. This growing understanding leads the class to decide how they would like to work together to give back to their community. Through this process, our culminating change-maker project is born and an authentic, empowering, and personal community service experience begins. Students further develop investigatory skills as they interview staff, volunteers, and community members, observe and take notes about what they learn from connected organizations, experience being a worker/volunteer for an organization, encourage their school community to get involved by organizing an event that raises awareness and collects donations for their cause, and finally record, publish, and present their findings.
Food Justice & Security Study. Food Drive Posters.