I truly enjoy learning design. I like to take curriculum and match it to my students' interests and needs as well as the standards and context where we teach. I find that this kind of curriculum personalization is effective when it comes to successful, enjoyable teaching/learning days.
Efforts like these take time, and efforts like these also benefit from collegiality and support. When we work together, our ideas are typically better.
As I think about this today, I'm focused on some recent efforts to update and personalize curriculum including the following:
Winter Olympics Board Game Creation
Many students will focus on computation with whole numbers and decimals as they create Winter Olympic Board Games. The question cards for the games focus students computing Olympic statistics and data to provide students with context with which to understand and enjoy the upcoming games. Since this is a new learning endeavor, I'm sure we'll refine as we go along.
Matter/Energy Presentations
Students are directing their hands-on matter/energy study and reading/research into projects that answer the units' main questions. Students have many choices as to their project work including slide shows, movies, songs, poems, stories, posters, and truly any idea they come up with that allows them to effectively share the knowledge they learned.
Environmental Education
In the past many years, students have worked with Drumlin Farm to headstart the endangered spadefoot toad in classrooms. Students have truly enjoyed this study, and we are reaching out to obtain funding to continue this study. In addition, we hope to receive funding to further bring the STE-standards to life with nature walks that focus on the environmental stewardship with particular attention to our local wetlands/river habitats.
Cultural Proficiency, Expert Visitors, and Global Changemaker Project
We are writing a grant to support the visits and presentation by multiple experts from across culture and discipline to model the kinds of thinking, questions, and efforts students engage in when they complete the Global Changemaker biography research/presentation project. There's some research to do to support this project, but we will do that since we know that when students see people that look and live like them in multiple professions, it helps students to focus and visualize their own dreams.
Math/Science Lab
I continue to think about how I can renovate my classroom into a wonderful math/science lab. I've reached out to colleagues and others for ideas and support.
Nature Path
I am also wondering how we can support students' exploration of our woodsy, wetlands habitat around the school. I am thinking that a small naturalist club can forward these efforts by working with an environmental consultant to build a nature trail. Efforts to do this began years ago, and we can build on what was done then.
There are many ways that we can creatively develop the learning and teaching in every context. We can still meet standards expectations and make the learning dynamic and engaging. I am thinking about this today and welcome your thoughts and ideas.
