EDUC 872 Curriculum Research Paper Assignment Instructions The candidate will write an 8-page, excluding title and reference pages, research-based paper in current APA format that focuses on the topic

136 7 CONSIDERATION 7 Resources That Support Instruction “The Harry Potter unit,” “the DNA lab,” “the Twitter project,” “the I Have a Dream activity”—teachers have often referred to units or other chunks of curriculum through the names of the resources they use, illustrating the excitement they have for sharing their favorite books, technology, and materials with their students. The passion teachers have for these resources shows how much they truly care about what they teach. Their enthusiasm transfers to their students and creates an energy of learning in the classroom.

Although we would like to believe these feelings occur solely because of the resource itself, that is probably not the only reason why students feel more engaged. It is more likely because of what the teachers ask stu- dents to do with the resource. Creating that match between what students do and the resources they use is the focus of this chapter. In a quality cur- riculum, learning experiences integrate quality texts, technology, and other materials in engaging yet purposeful ways.

Texts Students read text for many reasons, including to • Examine organizational structure.

• Determine the author’s purpose. EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 136EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 136 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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• Evaluate an argument.

• Determine relationships between ideas.

• Gather information.

• Challenge their own thinking.

• Practice reading skills.

• Explore diff erent genres, styles, authors, and cultures.

Each reason may require a diff erent type of text, so it is possible for stu- dents to be reading multiple texts at the same time but for diff erent pur- poses. Often the reasons are clearly established in the standards chosen for the unit. Let’s look at some examples that illustrate how standards indicate purpose and how the purpose inﬂ uences the choice of text and how it is used in a learning experience.

Example 1 Standard: RI.2.10 By the end of the year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, in the grades 2–3 text complexity band proﬁ - ciently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

Type of Text: Complex text as determined by • Qualitative measures such as level of meaning, structure, lan- guage, and knowledge demand.

• Quantitative measures such as Lexile scores that determine such factors as number of words and sentence length.

• The match between reader and task based on factors such as cognitive capabilities, reading skills, motivation and engage- ment, prior knowledge and experience, and content and themes.

Learning Experiences: Students • Preview From Seed to Plant, by Gail Gibbons, by placing small sticky notes next to the title, headings, and subheadings.

• Turn the heading or subheading of each section into a question and write it on the sticky note to guide the reading of the text. EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 137EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 137 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. 138 Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum • Underline/highlight information in order to answer the ques- tion created from the heading/subheading.

Example 2 Standard: RL.11–12.5 Analyze how an author’s choices concern- ing how to structure speciﬁ c parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.

Type of Text: Text selected needs to have a unique structure, such as an unusual beginning or ending or a comedic or tragic resolution.

Learning Experiences: Students read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler. As they read, they • Track their thinking (reactions, understanding of characters and events, shifts in thinking) as the story unfolds, on sticky notes or in a journal.

• Share their reactions to the author’s choice to start the book in the middle of the story, and the impact that decision had on the story itself, in small-group discussions.

Example 3 Standard: W.7.1 Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.

Type of Text: Text that illustrates an argument and how a claim is supported by reasons and evidence.

Learning Experiences: Students read the book George Bellows:

Painter with a Punch, by Robert Burleigh. The students • Read and discuss the story to develop an appreciation of George Bellows and his artwork.

• Identify the characteristics of the text that identify it as an argument and contribute to a class list, focusing on the inclu- sion and evaluation of an opposing point of view. EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 138EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 138 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. Resources That Support Instruction 1 3 9 • Reread the text, and use different-colored sticky strips to iden- tify the different points of view.

• Use their strips to write sentences showing the connection between opposing viewpoints (e.g., Some people think _____, but _____).

Example 4 Standard: Colorado Career and Technical Education (CTE), Archi- tecture and Construction Cluster, Design and Pre-Construction Pathway DPCP 01. Technical Skills:

Use the technical knowledge and skills required to pursue the targeted careers for all pathways in the career cluster, including knowledge of design, operation, and maintenance of technologi- cal systems critical to the career cluster.

DPCP.01.01 Read, interpret, and use technical drawings, docu- ments, and speciﬁ cations to plan a project.

DPCP.01.01a Interpret drawings in project plans.

Type of Text: Floor plans of a wide range of quality Learning Experiences: Students work in small groups to interpret a ﬂ oor plan that they ﬁ nd on the Internet. They • Identify the key elements of a ﬂ oor plan by creating a list of what they notice about the plan.

• Share their list to construct a class checklist of a quality plan.

• Use the checklist to write an evaluation of the plan, identifying how it incorporates the criteria and how it could be improved. In each of the examples, the characteristics of the text were identiﬁ ed from the standard and then the text was chosen because it exhibited those characteristics. Speciﬁ cally, • From Seed to Plant was selected because it exhibits the attributes of text complexity.

• We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: A Novel, by Karen Joy Fowler, was selected because of its unusual structure. EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 139EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 139 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. 140 Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum • George Bellows: Painter with a Punch, by Robert Burleigh, was selected because it presents an argument.

• Floor plans were selected because they include speciﬁ cations for planning a project.

Although these choices seem straightforward, we can learn a lot about choice of text through these examples, including how to address common misconceptions that often inﬂ uence and limit the texts teachers use in their classrooms.

In the 2nd grade example, teachers chose the text From Seed to Plant, by Gail Gibbons, because it met the criteria for text complexity. The adoption of the Common Core State Standards or similar standards has led to some confusion as to what “text complexity” actually means and when students should read complex text. Unfortunately, text complexity has often been translated to mean a Lexile or other qualitative score. As shown in the description of the characteristics of the text, text complexity also includes qualitative features and meeting the demands of the reader and the task.

In addition to the Lexile level, From Seed to Plant includes text features that students can use as a strategy for understanding the text. The text therefore meets not just one of the criteria for text complexity but also the other two because it has structural characteristics that can be used to meet the demands of the task. Many quality texts have been pushed aside because they are not of the “correct” Lexile score. Yet these texts, because of qualitative measures or how they are being used, may actually be com- plex text and more worthwhile to read.

In some cases concern over text complexity has also incorrectly led to the use of complex texts instead of varied levels of text, even though we know that students improve as readers when they have plenty of oppor- tunities to read text at their own level. Before asking students to read From Seeds to Plant, teachers could have them practice the reading strat- egy of using text features to comprehend nonﬁ ction texts with a text at their reading level. Once students had plenty of practice with text at their EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 140EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 140 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. Resources That Support Instruction 1 4 1 reading level, they then could apply their reading strategies to more diffi - cult texts.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves was chosen because of its unique structure: it begins in the middle. However, many other con- temporary as well as classical works of literature also have an unusual beginning or ending, or a comedic or tragic resolution that would meet this criterion; examples include Defending Jacob by William Landay, My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. With such diverse choices, a text cannot be chosen based solely on structure. In this case, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves sits in a unit with the following organizing center: Unit Title: Humanity Essential Question: What does it mean to be human?

Big Idea: Students understand that the parameters of what it means to be human are not deﬁ ned by all in the same way. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is serving two purposes: it meets the criterion of unusual structure, and it explores the ethical debate of ani- mal rights in a unique way. In many units, teachers choose a text because it can serve two purposes. It can be read for enjoyment and still be analyzed for the author’s use of language; it can be read to learn speciﬁ c content and still be used to analyze the author’s use of evidence in making a claim.

This concept of two purposes is particularly important in content areas where teachers feel there simply isn’t enough time to cover the content and read an outside text. For example, using a chapter from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot in a high school sci- ence class allows students the opportunity to use their scientiﬁ c knowl- edge of cells as they read about and engage in the bioethical debate about cell ownership. In a high school social studies classroom, students can read an excerpt from The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson and compare it to other secondary and primary sources that capture the times EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 141EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 141 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. 142 Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum and experiences of African Americans who moved north and west during the Great Migration from the South.

In addition to illustrating how a speciﬁ c text can be used, a quality curriculum also recommends alternative texts that will allow students to arrive at the end goal. For example, although George Bellows: Painter with a Punch is a good model for argumentative writing, a number of alter- natives can serve as mentor text. These texts should be included in the curriculum so that teachers have quality options that they can choose from when thinking about the interests, needs, and learning styles of their students.

This idea of choice is in direct opposition to a common practice that asserts that all students in a given grade level or classroom should read the same text. Although this approach is helpful at times, many new oppor- tunities emerge when students read diff erent texts for the same purpose or reread a text in a diff erent class or grade level for a new purpose. For example, teachers could use George Bellows: Painter with a Punch in any class—not only an ELA class—where students are writing arguments. An art teacher could also use it for examining George Bellows’s artistic style or as a model for writing critiques. Conﬁ ning a book to a speciﬁ c grade level or class limits its use; rereading for diff erent purposes promotes greater comprehension. Clearly identifying texts within the curriculum resources will promote this practice of multiple readings for diff erent purposes by allowing all stakeholders access to information regarding what students are reading and why.

There are also times when it is best to describe the type of text but allow for a wide variety of quality, as seen in the learning experiences for architectural design. Here the goal was for students to access and evaluate ﬂ oor plans for quality. In the real world, architects are not always handed a quality plan but rather need to know what to look for and what questions to ask in order to ultimately create a design plan. Although it would be advantageous to the students to have an exemplar to refer to while design- ing their own ﬂ oor plan, the exemplar should not be their only model or necessarily the ﬁ rst plan they look at. EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 142EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 142 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. Resources That Support Instruction 1 4 3 Technology Examine these three standards and try to determine the grade level and content area to which they apply:

1. Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.

2. Students integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

3. Students read, view, and listen for information presented in any format (e.g., textual, visual, media, digital) in order to make inferences and gather meaning.

These standards come from diff erent documents; the ﬁ rst is an ISTE stan- dard, the second is a Common Core State Anchor Standard, and the third is from the American Association of School Librarians (AASL). Although each addresses the use of technology in slightly diff erent ways, they all require that students use text, visual, media, and digital resources. These standards reﬂ ect the fact that, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center (Anderson, 2015; Perrin & Duggan, 2015), 87 percent of adult Amer- icans use the Internet, 68 percent of Americans own smartphones, 45 per- cent own tablets, and 73 percent own a laptop or desktop computer, making it diffi cult to ignore the need to address technology in the curriculum.

I use the term technology here in the broadest sense of the word, to include the devices—computers, tablets, smartphones—that students use to access information, collaborate, and share what they have learned. Lap- top computers and tablets are increasingly common, and schools vary in their policies regarding cell phone use and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) measures. The goal here is not to debate the merits and disadvantages of the devices or the related policies but rather to focus on what to include in the curriculum that will make the use of technology beneﬁ cial to students.

The general guiding principle around technology in the curriculum is to focus on how technology is a medium for learning rather than an end in itself (Pahomov, 2014). With that in mind, let’s look at examples that EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 143EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 143 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. 144 Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum illustrate the most common purposes that technology serves in the class- room: accessing information, collaborating and interacting, and present- ing and publishing.

Accessing Information We live in a world where we have immediate access to large amounts of information via the Internet, so the question in the classroom is not whether we should use the Internet to access information but rather how much information to include in the curriculum; in other words, do we tell students where to ﬁ nd information or do we let them ﬁ nd it on their own?

The answer lies in how involved students are in the process of getting the information. The less involved they are, the more information needs to be included in the curriculum. The more involved they are, the less informa- tion needs to be included. Let’s look at two examples to see exactly what this means. Example 1 Students examine how speakers convey powerful messages by • Watching the video Be the Punchline (Bass, Powers, & Michael Jr., 2014) and working in small groups to complete a graphic organizer identifying the message, details, and structure used by Michael Jr. to make his point.

• Watching Sam Berns’s My Philosophy for a Happy Life and identifying his message, the details he uses to convey his mes- sage, and the structure used to support his point on the same graphic organizer.

• Analyzing their graphic organizer to create criteria for effective ways speakers use details and structure to make a point. In this example, the students have a passive role in accessing infor- mation. The media have been preselected so the students can focus on analyzing the examples. Although students can ﬁ nd their own examples, it would be best for them to do so after establishing criteria for how speak- ers use details and structure to make a point. EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 144EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 144 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. Resources That Support Instruction 1 4 5 The purpose for including these speciﬁ c presentations is to identify examples of presentations and speeches students can view in order to analyze how a speaker uses structure and details to convey a message.

Certainly other presentations and speeches could be used, and some teachers may opt to select their own; but—like some students—not all teachers will know how or where to look. Including this information in the learning experience gives teachers a starting point and gives students models to examine. In cases such as this one, including a speciﬁ c website is particularly helpful in learning experiences in which students are being introduced to an idea or concept, practicing a speciﬁ c skill, or evaluating an example.

Students are most involved in accessing information when conducting research on a topic of their choice. When students are choosing a topic, it is not feasible to off er all of the possible sources of information. What will be helpful to students are learning experiences that teach them to analyze the credibility of the sources they are examining, as well as learning expe- riences that show them how to use tools to organize, retrieve, and anno- tate their sources. Example 2 illustrates learning experiences focused on the process of collecting and organizing materials. In this case, students are collecting resources they will use for individual performance tasks that explore leadership. Example 2 Students • Explore the online tool Diigo by watching an introductory video and browsing the site, taking note of what is easy to use and what is difﬁ cult; they work in small groups to address the areas that were difﬁ cult.

• Read 2–3 articles from an open collection of resources they are interested in; identify the relationship between the articles and the tags used to organize the articles.

• Contribute to a class list of tags that could be used in identify- ing articles about leadership. EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 145EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 145 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. 146 Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum • Research and subscribe to RSS feeds or SmartBriefs that have the potential to include articles on leadership.

• Identify and tag articles to include in the class Diigo library. Collaborating and Interacting Another important role of technology in the classroom is that it allows students to collaborate and interact with each other, the teacher, and the general public in many diff erent ways. In general, the choice of platform will depend on such factors as how many students will work together and the role the teacher will play in the interaction. The curriculum will need to identify appropriate platforms for interaction while the teacher identi- ﬁ es the collaborative groups or pairs and actively participates in feedback or discussions with her students, as shown in the following examples. Example 1: Students use Storybird to create and illustrate origi- nal narratives. In this example, Storybird is a speciﬁ c platform that students can use to write and illustrate narratives. The decision to include this speciﬁ c resource in the curriculum was based on several factors—namely, Storybird • Is conducive to narrative writing because of its booklike structure.

• Includes a wide range of pictures that students can select from to reﬂ ect the storyline of their narrative.

• Can be conﬁ gured as a closed network, allowing students to work together and receive feedback from their peers and teacher.

• Can be used for both process (the writing of the story) and publi- cation (sharing the ﬁ nished product). Example 2: Students work in peer-editing groups using Google Drive to provide each other with feedback. In this case, Google Drive is included as the tool of choice primarily because the school district has purchased Chromebooks that operate using Google programs. However, in addition to its availability, Google EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 146EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 146 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. Resources That Support Instruction 1 4 7 Drive is a simple tool for the students and teacher to use for collaborating, documenting, and saving changes to work on a closed network.

In both of these examples, the tools are chosen based on their avail- ability, ease of use, and appropriateness for the task. When students use collaborative or interactive tools for their own research, the description of a tool should be more open-ended, as in this example: Example 3: Students use an online tool such as SurveyMonkey or Twitter to conduct qualitative research for their inquiry project around the question Is technology always good? In this case, the curriculum provides suggestions, but students are not limited to those choices. Students are expected to choose the interactive tool that they will use based on what they want to accomplish. They will need to set up their own network to collaborate with other members of their group and invite the teacher to participate or provide feedback.

These three examples illustrate only a small fraction of the technol- ogy that is available to facilitate student interaction. The possibilities are endless and continually changing, allowing students to survey, record, play, and create in new and exciting ways. To prevent getting lost in the myriad of choices and creating tasks that focus on the novelty of the tool, it is necessary to ask, How is this tool or platform going to make the pro- cess more streamlined and make it easier for the students and teacher to work together?

Presenting and Publishing Like tools for collaboration, publication tools are numerous. In some cases, the collaboration tool is the same one that will be used for publica- tion. The Storybird example is one such case; once the students complete their book, they can use Storybird to publish it for others to see.

Not all tools, however, will lead directly to publication. One platform may be needed for collaborating and a second for sharing the ﬁ nished product. In these cases, the curriculum will either need to identify a tool for publication or leave it to student choice. Once again, the purpose will EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 147EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 147 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. 148 Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum determine when a task should contain a speciﬁ c tool or when the choice should be left open-ended. Let’s look at two examples to determine what should be considered when making this decision. Example 1: Students choose one of the global issues featured on the United Nations website, http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/.

After conducting research on the issue as a whole and focusing on a case study of how the issue affects a speciﬁ c community, students write and submit a proposal for an awareness cam- paign. The class chooses one of the proposals and carries out the plan using the appropriate media and technology to reach their target audience. In this performance assessment, the use of technology and appropri- ate tools is contingent on many factors. Limiting student choice would change the entire assessment. In this case, students would beneﬁ t from a series of learning experiences that feature the analysis of diff erent media used for awareness campaigns, and the tools available for creating them. Example 2: Students create a LinkedIn page to establish an online professional presence. In this task, the tool for publication is identiﬁ ed. Although other social media sites can be used for business networking, LinkedIn is the largest in the world. If the intention of the teacher is to provide graduating seniors with the opportunity to learn how LinkedIn works, it does not make sense for the choice of tool to be open-ended or for a diff erent tool to be used. If the task were diff erent—for example, create an online portfolio showcas- ing your accomplishments over the last four years—students could deter- mine the speciﬁ c platform to use. They could use video, photography, and graphics on a variety of diff erent platforms, depending on the message and materials they wished to share.

Selecting technology for a curriculum should be done with full under- standing of the terms of agreement, including matters related to security, privacy, and ownership. For example, Twitter requires an e-mail address, and LinkedIn has an age limit. Although both are public forums, they can EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 148EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 148 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. Resources That Support Instruction 1 4 9 be limited to select viewers. Research into diff erent tools should be done before inclusion in the curriculum, so teachers can use the tool with con- ﬁ dence that it complies with school regulations and are clear about what steps need to be taken so students can use the tool safely.

Materials This ﬁ nal category includes graphic organizers, models and exemplars, student checklists, primary sources, common templates, protocols, and other materials that support the learning experiences for the unit. The number of potential materials could be overwhelming and result in an unwieldy document if not properly managed, so the policy of “less is more” should deﬁ nitely be applied when determining what to include. Here are some questions to consider when selecting or evaluating resources:

• Is the resource an integral part of a learning experience? If a learning experience refers to a speciﬁ c protocol, organizer, photograph, or other resource, the resource should be included in the curriculum. For example, consider this learning experience: Students examine the painting Harvest Time by Grandma Moses and describe life in a rural community. Because this learning experience references a speciﬁ c painting, the paint- ing should be readily available for teachers to use with their students.

If the learning experience simply referenced the artwork of Grandma Moses—for example, “Students examine the paintings of Grandma Moses and describe life in a rural community”—it would be suffi cient to include a website where the paintings could be found.

• Does this resource include a process that will be repeated in subsequent units? Processes that are likely to be repeated throughout the year as a regular routine include discussion protocols, procedures for lab experiments, steps for analyzing primary sources, and checklists for group work. In such cases, the guidelines and other supporting tools, such as rubrics, checklists, and reﬂ ection sheets, should be included in the unit where the process is introduced and then, depending on EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 149EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 149 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. 150 Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum frequency of use, in subsequent units. For example, in this learning expe- rience, students are introduced to a discussion protocol: Students participate in a Socratic seminar in which they discuss the essential question What is more constant than change? If students engage in a Socratic seminar on a regular basis, in every unit, it is suffi cient to include the protocol once. If the seminar occurs sporad- ically, it would be beneﬁ cial to include the protocol whenever it is used.

In either case, because a speciﬁ c protocol has been identiﬁ ed, it would be helpful to have the steps outlined in an easily accessible document.

• Does this tool support school values? Throughout this book, I have discussed ways to align curriculum to standards that reﬂ ect the dis- trict’s or school’s values. If a particular resource exempliﬁ es these values, it should be consistently referenced and used throughout the curricu- lum. For example, if a district has decided to focus on fostering student thinking, they may be working with Thinking Maps (Hyerle, 2009).

Thinking Maps consist of eight visual tools that are used for diff erent cognitive functions. A teacher may choose to use a frame of reference circle map so that students can identify what they know about the causes of the Civil War, what has inﬂ uenced their understanding, and the ques- tions they have. The frame of reference circle map has been speciﬁ cally chosen for this diagnostic task so the teacher can determine not only what students know, but also how reliable that information is, based on where it came from. Because fostering student thinking is a districtwide focus, the frame of reference circle map will appear in multiple curricula and will be used throughout the year; however, it should still appear in the curriculum the ﬁ rst time it is used, for easy accessibility.

Although purpose underlies the selection of texts, technology, and materials, it is important to also demonstrate cultural competency when selecting these resources. Cultural competency is the ability of a system to work eff ectively in cross-cultural situations (Goode & Dunne, 2004).

As it relates to the choice of resources, cultural competency means being culturally aware of the students you work with and ensuring that the resources are representative of who they are or will expose them to cultures diff erent from their own. A culturally aware curriculum will EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 150EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 150 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. Resources That Support Instruction 1 5 1 include resources that address, in an unbiased way, the religions, races, and cultural practices of the students, as well as those who are diff erent from them.

Implications for Evaluating, Creating, and Revising Curriculum A wealth of resources is available to teachers through the Internet and through programs purchased for schools, so whether evaluating a curric- ulum to determine if it should be purchased or revised or creating a new curriculum, the challenge is not only what should be included but also how to limit what is included.

The common theme throughout this chapter for determining what to include is purpose: what purpose will the text, technology, or resource serve in the curriculum? The identiﬁ cation of appropriate resources can occur simultaneously as learning experiences are being evaluated or cre- ated, as described in Chapter 6.

A quality curriculum includes learning experiences that identify what the students will do, why they will do it, and the evidence of student learning.

The purpose for choosing a particular resource is identiﬁ ed in the descrip- tion of why students will complete a task, making it simple to identify the necessary resources at the same time. Consider the following examples: Example 1: Students examine photographs from the New York Times photo essay Poverty’s Palette and write a description of what life was like in the South during the Great Depression. In this example, the images provide background information on what life was like in the South during the Great Depression. The pictures have a very speciﬁ c purpose and should be easily accessible to the teachers who wish to use them; therefore, they should be included in the curriculum. Example 2: Students read the article “Alabama Pardons 3 ‘Scotts- boro Boys’ After 80 Years” by Alan Blinder (2013) and use key details from the article to write a summary of the events that occurred and their implications for today. EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 151EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 151 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. 152 Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum In this learning experience, the purpose of the account is twofold: to pro- vide information to students and to have students use key details to write a summary. The article selected needs to meet these criteria. A primary source document that focuses on reaction to the trial’s outcome could not be used for these purposes. Although it may be appropriate for the next learning experience, a narrative account of someone’s feelings might not be the best for determining what happened at the trial and its implica- tions 80 years later. Example 3: Students complete a double-bubble map to compare the Scottsboro trial with the trial of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird. In this example, the double-bubble map is used for comparison. This Thinking Map is included as part of the learning experience because it is structured to be used for mirrored analysis. Although a Venn diagram might be an alternative for some and can certainly be used for mirror anal- ysis, it is a tool better suited for math and science. Because the double- bubble map is speciﬁ cally identiﬁ ed in the learning experience and has a speciﬁ c purpose, it would need to be included as a resource.

Using purpose to determine what should be included in the curriculum will help simplify the process of choosing resources. It may also reveal a resource better suited for another purpose within the curriculum. It is conceivable that teachers might use a portion of a classroom textbook or anthology in a way other than the one prescribed by the publisher.

In addition to determining what to incorporate in the curriculum, it is just as important to identify a way to limit and manage the resources included. This eff ort becomes particularly challenging when the curric- ulum is being implemented, for this is when teachers will adjust existing resources and ﬁ nd additional resources that they wish to include. It is important to have a system in place for managing these resources. One suggestion is to put in place a vetting process for reviewing resources before including them in the curriculum. The system can include a per- son or group responsible for reviewing materials based on an established EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 152EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 152 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. Resources That Support Instruction 1 5 3 set of criteria. This process will help to ensure the inclusion of quality materials with distinct purposes and help to eliminate resources that do not fully meet the purposes of the learning experiences or that duplicate existing materials. A second way to manage additional resources is by cre- ating a folder or site on the district’s network where teachers can upload and tag materials that others may use, similar to teacherspayteachers.com or other sharing sites. Because this approach allows for the inclusion of more materials, the folder or site would also need to be managed so that it does not become overwhelming.

Summary: Resources Texts should be chosen for the curriculum based on the purpose or pur- poses they serve. This could mean that the same text is read for multiple reasons or that students read multiple texts at the same time because the purpose for reading is diff erent. In some cases, it is not necessary to spe- ciﬁ cally identify a text. The curriculum can off er a selection of texts that meet the same criteria or describe criteria so students can select their own.

The guiding principle for determining what technology to include in the curriculum is to focus on the result and not the device itself. In gen- eral, technology is used to access information, to collaborate or interact with others, and to publish or share. The need to identify speciﬁ c websites and platforms depends on the level of student involvement in the task.

The more open-ended the task and the more involved the students are in the task—as when students engage in a self-selected, inquiry-based per- formance assessment—the less information needs to be included in the curriculum. Speciﬁ city is necessary when speciﬁ c models, exemplars, websites, and tools are shared to introduce an idea or concept, used to practice a speciﬁ c skill, or evaluated as models.

Materials include tangible products such as graphic organizers, mod- els and exemplars, student checklists, primary sources, common tem- plates, and protocols that are needed to engage in the unit’s learning experiences. As learning experiences clearly communicate why students EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 153EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 153 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2016. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. 154 Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum are completing a speciﬁ c task, materials are selected because students will need them to accomplish the task.

A quality curriculum includes not only a process for the careful selec- tion of quality resources but also a procedure for ensuring access to addi- tional quality resources as the curriculum is being implemented.

Tools and Activities for Evaluation, Design, and Revision • Example Analysis: Analyzing Standards for Text Features— These examples ( beginning on page 137) can be used as models for choosing texts to meet a speciﬁ c purpose. The text purpose and features are ﬁ rst extracted from the standard, and then appropriate texts are identiﬁ ed that address the purpose and features.

• Example Analysis: Technology Integration—This activity involves evaluating sample learning experiences. The ﬁ rst step is to iden- tify the purpose of the learning experiences as described by why students will engage in the task. The second step is to determine how technology is used to achieve the purpose identiﬁ ed in the learning experience.

• Guiding Questions to Analyze Resources—The following three questions can be used to guide the review of resources when con- sidering whether they should be included in the curriculum:

– Is the resource an integral part of a learning experience?

– Does this resource include a process that will be repeated in subsequent units?

– Does this tool support school values?

Checklist for Evaluation, Design, and Revision Texts, technology, and resources have been chosen because they meet a speciﬁ c purpose as set out in the standards and learning experiences for the unit.

Processes are in place for both the selection and limitation of texts, technology, and resources to include in the curriculum. EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 154EnsuringHighQualityCurr.indd 154 10/4/16 2:46 PM10/4/16 2:46 PMLalor, A. D. M. (2016). Ensuring high-quality curriculum : How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Created from liberty on 2021-12-12 04:11:50.