Powerful Learning: From Rhetoric to

Reality

Nancy Doda, Ph.D. and Mark Springer

www.teacher-to-teacher.comhttp://

www.allianceforpowerfullearning.com

Start with

the end in

mindCreating powerful learning for our young adolescents

What Are We After?

• Learning That Feels Important To Students

• Learning that Supports Student Mastery of the Standards

• Learning that an Be Transferred to New Challenges and Contexts

• Learning that Leads to Competence in Independence & Collaboration

• Learning that Sticks; Endures

Criteria for A Rigorous Curriculum

1. Has the Capacity to Engage Young Minds

2. Has Enduring Value Beyond the Classroom

3. Leans on Themes of Personal & Social Significance

4. Applies Knowledge & Skills to Real World Questions, Issues or Problems

5. Uncovers Misconceptions.Beane, From Rhetoric to Reality; Wiggins & McTighe, Understanding by Design

Our Curriculum Choices

CURRICULUM CONTINUUM

TRADITIONAL

INTERDISCIPLINARY

‘MULTI-DISCIPLINARY’INTEGRATED

INTEGRATIVE

SEPARATE SUBJECTS,

SEPARATE TOPICS

SEPARATE SUBJECTS SHARE COMMON, TEACHER-SELECTED THEMES

NO SEPARATE SUBJECTS,

THEMES SELECTED BY TEACHER NO SEPARATE

SUBJECTS,

STUDENTS AND TEACHERS NEGOTIATE THEMES

Brazee, Ed & Capelluti, Jody (1995). Dissolving Boundaries: Toward an Integrative Curriculum. Columbus, OH: National Middle School Association.

A Sample Student’s Day

1. Order of Operations

2. Appropriate Prefixes

3. Narrative Writing/Heroes

4. Cells

5. Ancient Greece/Rome

• What holds these disparate puzzle pieces together in the student’s mind?

• What insures that students will be able retrieve and use this knowledge at some later point?

“Almost everyone had had occasion to look back upon his school days and wonder what has become of the knowledge he was supposed to have amassed during his years of schooling … but it was so segregated when it was acquired and hence is so disconnected from the rest of experience that it is not available under the actual conditions of life.”

Dewey (1938, 48)

Perils of Separate Subject Approach

• It’s Fragmented

• It’s Randomly Redundant

• It Leans Towards Content Details

• It’s Fast & Furious Coverage

• It Yields Short-Lived, Superficial Retention

“…an integrated

approach seems to hold

the most promise of any

curriculum design in

preparing middle grades

students for the global

age”. (Andrews, G. Turning points, 2000)

Benefits of An Interdisciplinary

Approach• It’s Authentic: Life is Integrated

• It’s Rigorous: Complex Problems Are Best Solved Using Multi-Discipline Approach

• It’s Coherent: Connections Strengthen Retention (Fragmented Curriculum Disrupts Retention)

• It’s Inviting: Leans on Big Ideas and Questions

Themes

A Sense of Place

A Sense of Time

A Sense of Quality

Unit Theme-A Sense of Quality

Understanding Systems that shape the Quality of our Life

Art as a SystemOf Quality

The

Wyeths

Systems of the

Human Body

The Systems in our Homes

Systems in the Watershed

WastewaterTreatment

Water Treatment

Power Generation

Recycling

Where are we now?

Where do we hope to be?

The Long View

Time Frame

SEPT OCT NOV DEC JAN FEB MAR APR MAY

SCI Cells

MATH Order Operat.

SOC STDS Greece and Rome

LANG ARTS &LIT LINKS

Narrativeheroes.Prefixes

UNIT PLANNING STAGES

• Stage 1-Identify Desired Understandings

• Stage 2-Design Performance Assessment

• Stage 3-Design Learning Activities

A Sample Student’s Day

1. Order of Operations

2. Appropriate Prefixes

3. Narrative Writing

4. Cells

5. Ancient Greece/Rome

• What holds these disparate puzzle pieces together in the student’s mind?

• What will make this knowledge useful and meaningful?

STAGE ONEIf this is the knowledge

my students should come to know, what is it I hope they will understand about that

knowledge?

Stage One

• EQ: What are the limits of human capacity?

• Students will understand that human capacities are many and varied.

SOCIAL STUDIES

What are the limits of human capacity?

LANGUAGEARTS

MATH

SCIENCE

LL

Stage One cont’d

• Students will understand that cultures differ in their notions about human capacity.

• Students will understand that humans can convey those notions through various media.

• Students will understand how the physical aspects of the human body effect our capacities.

• Students will understand how our environment effect our human capacities?

Connections

• “Numbers”-Film• Math is a tool that human beings use expand our capacities.

Task 1

Complete STAGE ONE for Quarter 1

Task 1

Finalize Subject Area essential Questions and Tie them to the Overarching Unit Question

Finalize all Subject Area Understandings

• *This is where you will identify standards being taught.

STAGE TWOIf my students truly

understand what I have taught, what will serve as

performance evidence of their understanding?

EQ: What does it mean to lead a healthy life?

Understanding 1: Students will understand elements of good nutrition.

Understanding 2: Students will understand that a balanced diet contributes to a healthy life.

Title: “You are what you eat”

Performance Tasks: Students analyze & improve on a hypothetical family’s diet for 1 week. Students plan a and defend a week’s menu for a healthy week.

Examples of performance assessments include

• projects enabling a number of students to work together on a complex problem that requires planning, research, internal discussion, and group presentation

• essays assessing students' understanding of a subject through a written description, analysis, explanation, or summary

• experiments testing how well students understand scientific concepts and can carry out scientific processes.

• demonstrations giving students opportunities to show their mastery of subject-area content and procedures.

• portfolios allowing students to provide a broad portrait of their performance through files that contain collections of students' work, assembled over time.

What are the content/skill standards that students

might be demonstrating if they were to successfully

each of these Performance Tasks?

What does it mean to really understand?

• Ability to explain

• Ability to interpret

• Ability to apply

• Ability to have perspective

• Ability to relate; empathize

• Ability to know how we understand or fail to understand something

(Wiggins and McTighe, 1998)

The Two Question Test

1. Could students do well on this assessment but not really understand X.?

2. Could students do poorly on the assessment but really understand?

Sample Performance Assessment

• Individually or in small groups, students will create a new “human being” with well defined capacities.

• They will write the script of conversations between the ‘God’s as they create the first human being.

Possible Components• What are the physical capacities of

your human being? (eg; cells…)

• What will the environment be that will shape your new human being? (eg; plants, culture)

• What images describe this human being? (eg; images)

• Defend all choices.

Task 2

Develop Performance Assessment (s)

Unit Planning

Plan Stage One and Two for Remaining Quarters

Essential Questions•What makes us who we

are?•How much can we control

who we become?•Which counts more in who we are: nature or nurture?

Desired Understandings: Hard Won, Developed Over Time

• Students will understand…• that each human being is unique• that human diversity is the product of genetics, lifestyle and experiences

• that human beings have some control over who they are and can become

• that human beings are resilient and can adapt and change

Desired Understandings: Hard Won, Developed Over Time

• Students will understand that:• the earth’s resources are not unlimited• how an individual behaves can impact the quality of life on the earth

• if every person was responsible for his/ her actions and interactions there would be less strife and greater happiness in our lives

STAGE THREEGiven this is what my students will be asked to do with their Understanding, what learning

activities will be most instructive?

SOCIAL STUDIES

What are the limits of human capacity?

LANGUAGEARTS

MATH

SCIENCE

LL

The Two Question Test

1. Could students do the activities but still fail to be ready for the my assessment?

2. Could students fail to do all the activities and be ready to do well on the my assessment?

Cautions• Seek out Concepts, Processes, Questions,

Ideas rather than Content Topics

• Be willing to rotate subject area leads

• Always Ask yourself: What will make sense to students?

• Use a Planning Framework

• Have a story line: notable beginning and end