What should we teach and how should we teach it?

“Different children know different things” (Hirsch, p.112)   Students come to school with many different types of family life.  Non-traiditional families are becoming more and more common.  Some have older siblings and learn about many things that are not age appropriate, where others are only children.  Some students come watching TV and playing video games which are not age appropriate, yet others' screen times are carefully monitored.  No two children come to school with the same background and prior knowledge, so why do we teach all children the same way?  Today, schools are changing and we are getting further away from this traditional way of teaching, but we still have a long way to go.

Growing up, I excelled in math but struggled in reading.  I was tested for dyslexia, special ed., you name it.  Nothing was found so I kept floating on by through school.  Reading aloud round robin, from our basal-reader, was my least favorite part of the day.  I could not process what was being read aloud nor did I feel confident reading aloud to my peers.  I would sit there and count how many students were before me and count paragraphs to see what I had to read.  Then, I would repeatedly read that paragraph in my head to make sure I knew all the words and would not mess up.  When I was given a beginning of the year assessment in fifth grade, I was reading 3 grade levels behind!  And because everything we read (social studies, science, reading) was 3 grade levels too advanced for me, I struggled a lot to comprehend the material.

Being trained through Lucy Calkin’s Reading Workshop, it just makes sense to allow children to read what they want to read at their own reading level.  They can still acquire they same skill set being taught through mini-lessons, but they can practice and become proficient while reading a book they enjoy.  This seems similar to the “self-selection” method.  (Hirsch)  It is important for teaches to teach the skill set; I think many of us forget this while we get overwhelmed by all of these “required” texts or topics to teach.  What is important is that our students know the skill set and have a great range of prior knowledge to continue to make new connections to what they are learning.  We need to be assessing our students on their ability to perform the necessary skills and know if they are improving and becoming proficient.

After I downloaded the reading for the week, but before I read the articles, I was observing my students on the computer during indoor recess.  They were playing video games on poptropica. I had approved that particular website in the past, but I never actually watched them play.  I started asking them questions and asking them what they learn from the game.  I was amazed by how much information they were able to provide and the amount of math, deductive reasoning, problem solving and critical thinking skills needed to play the game.  How much were my students learning from this online video game?

This left me thinking all week as I read, and the idea of “’failure-based learning,’ in which failure is brief, surmountable, often exciting and therefore not scary” (Corbett, 2010) kept me pondering.  My school is very low on funding and the few computers we have are very outdated.  Although, this is a common barrier with technology, it is becoming less and less of an issue. (Kurt 2012)  Without video games, how do we recreate that type of learning environment our kids are conditioned to through the different subject-areas?  Many of my students shut-down when they see a word problem, before they even attempt to try.  Why are they so willing to attempt, fail and try again in a video game?  And why does this not transfer over to other learning environments? Although, I do like to incorporate technology in my classroom, I still have assignments leaning towards a teacher-led approach. With my students, if there is not enough direction or accountability, they will procrastinate and waste their time.  This, in addition to many other factors, is common amongst many teachers today. (Friedrich & Hron, 2011)

Looking at some blogs, I found this one to be particular fun.  The teacher has “Fun Ways to Teach Parts of Speech.”  I liked this blog because it has the classic “School House Rock” listed, but it also has some other new and improved resources listed as well.  I particularly liked the video game Grammar Ninja.  I started playing the game and thought it was a little easy, but once I got used to it asking me for verbs, it switched to nouns.  This caused me to carelessly lose points.  Which, in turn, made me want to keep playing to get a better score.

As successful and popular the Quest for Learning school seems, I found it interesting that on “federally mandated standardized tests last spring scored on average no better and no worse than other sixth graders in their district” (Corbett, 2010).  How much money does this type of learning environment cost and is it worth it?

Additional resources cited above:

Helmut Felix Friedrich & Aemilian Hron (2011): Factors affecting teachers’ student-centered classroom computer use, Educational Media International, 48:4, 273-285

Serhat Kurt (2012): How do teachers prioritize the adoption of technology in the classroom?, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 18:2, 217-231

Curriculum... What is it? What is its purpose?

Curriculum is the plan we implement to take a journey through learning.  There are many types of curriculum and many methods to implement them, but how do we know which one is best?  There is data, of course, but anyone can swing data to show that their curriculum works.  Ken brings an interesting point, in that we are all born creative. but with curriculum, it deprives our students of being creative.  If this is true, then what is the purpose?  We teach our students to do what is right, to get the right answers, to NOT do wrong. “If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything creative.” (Robinson, 2006)

How can we chose a curriculum to create a plan for us (not creative, in itself) if we cannot even know for what exactly we need to prepare our students for.  When they graduate, there will be technology that we cannot even currently imagine.  We are currently preparing our students for a world where their future jobs may not even exist yet.  “The unpredictability is extraordinary…we don’t know what the world will be like in 5 [years]” (Robinson, 2006) so how can we plan for 15 or even 20 years from now?

If we can use our students’ natural inquisitive nature and teach through authentic lessons in which they pose their own questions and guide their own learning, is the only purpose of having a curriculum due to the standard requirements given to us?  As Dewey suggests, “abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child’s experience.” (Dewey, p.109)  How can we do this when we have intense pressure on test scores at both the state and national level?

Dewey says that textbook and teachers, together, present subject matter as it is viewed by the specialist.  “Such modification and revision as it undergoes are a mere elimination of certain scientific difficulties, aid the general reduction to a lower intellectual level.” (Dewey, p.118)  Does it reduce intellect because the information is given to students and not discovered by them?  If that is the case, how to do we expect to have the resources and materials to let the students authentically learn about such things.  If students were learning about the relationship between the sun, Earth and moon, how would many of those big ideas be taught without information given by a “specialist?”  There are some things they could learn individually: moon phases, daylight, and seasons just by observing the world around us.  But how would the students understand that seasons are causes because the earth is on a tilt and that other parts of the world do not experience seasons like we do today, without a textbook or other source of information?  How would you learn about tides in the ocean and how they correlate to the moon without living near the ocean? Learning about such things that you haven’t actually discovered or experienced, how would that lower intellectual level?

There are many perspectives on the purpose of curriculum and how to implement it.  Schubert bring up some interesting points.  I find myself to have beliefs that are a hybrid of the social behaviorist and the experientialist. “Babbit pointed out that conceptions of need can be derived scientifically, by survey methods.  He said that we must re-make curriculum in every generation by asking what successful people do, and more importantly what they need to know in order to do it. “(Schubert, 1996, p.4)  I believe that if we have a curriculum to plan the journey of learning for our students it should relate to the time and the students.  Therefore, it makes sense to constantly adapt and “re-make” curriculum to meet the students needs.  But, if we are looking at successful people, who determines who “successful people” are?  We would first have to define successful.  Some people become “successful” due to scamming and illegal operations.  This would then mean that if successful people are drug dealers, we should recreate curriculum to teach the students of the ins and outs of successful dealers so we can prepare them for future employment.

As for the social behaviorist route of thinking of having standards and benchmarks done at the state and national level, so if students move they will be prepared at another school.  Although they wouldn’t need to have the same curriculum per se, there should be some standards to ensure that teachers are making sure their students are learning what is to be expected.  How would teachers be assessed if there were no common standards?  Today, technology makes access to appropriate research so easy to grasp that it is possible to tailor-make curriculum to fit any configuration of local, state, and national needs. (Schubert, 1996) 

With all of that being said, I am more confused about what the purpose of curriculum is than I was last week.  The reading prompted more questions than they answered.  If curriculum hinders creativity and intelligence, why is it is something that districts across the country seek and require?

About me...

My name is Antoinette and I am currently living in Chelsea, Michigan.  I received my bachelor’s degree from Michigan State with a concentration in Social Studies in 2008.  I became interested in literacy my second year of college when I took TE 248.  The following year, I took TE348 Reading and Learning with Children’s Literature.  By then, I had already taken too many courses in Social Studies, it did not make sense to change the route I was on to graduate. 

After my year-long internship in fourth grade, I was not able to obtain a teaching position.  I was a substitute teacher.  During that year I was able to attain a long-term substitute position as a media specialist in a 5/6 building.  I absolutely loved spending my day in the library, talking to students about books and teaching technology.  The following year I took a 4^th grade position teaching science and social studies.  During my time there, the district was undergoing curriculum changes and adopted Lucy Calkin’s Reading Workshop.  They paid for instructors from the Teacher’s College Reading Institute to come to the district for training.  I was then laid-off and spent another year subbing.  I held a long-term position in 5^th grade in the district I had worked in the following year, where I was able to continue teaching through Reading Workshop.  Last year I also held a long-term substitute position in a kindergarten classroom. 

This year I have been Co-Teaching in a 5/6 split classroom at a charter school in Ypsilanti for the first half of the school year and I will finish out the school year in the building as an instructional teacher assistant working one-on-one with students who are at-risk and did not pass the MEAP in Reading.

After being trained in Lucy Calkin’s Reading Workshop, I love the idea of using anchor charts to go along with mini-lessons.  The key with the mini-lessons is to keep them short, to the point, but give a personal connection for the students.  Also, although it may seem like a lot of writing, I really see a benefit in having students respond to the text.  You can gain a lot of knowledge about a student, how they think and how they learn based on their responses.

In addition to working full time and taking 4 graduate classes, I am currently engaged and am planning my July wedding.  In my "free time" I enjoy reading, biking, running, baking, gardening and geocaching.  If I am able to work in enough time for training, I am planning on completing my first triathlon by the end of this summer.

I am very interested in beginning to understand parts of the social perspective on curriculum in schools!