Artisitc Represetation of a High School Student's Mind

Memo

Ramsey School District
266 East Main Street
Ramsey, NJ 07446

MARC VOGEL & ERICA ROTH TEL: (201) 785-2300 CO-PRINCIPALS FAX: (201) 934-6623
SMITH MIDDLE SCHOOL

December 4, 2008

To: Barry Bachenheimer, Superintendent

From: Marc Vogel and Erica Roth, Co-Principals

Re: Fifth Grade Curriculum Change

The proposed astronomy unit for the fifth grade science curriculum is interdisciplinary in nature and focuses on creative thinking, critical thinking, and communication through the use of technology and purposeful reading, writing, and discussion. It teaches to our students’ left- and right-brains, and even though it incorporates creativity, it is by no means a “Crayola Curriculum”. In addition, it is formatted in an Understanding by Design (UbD) template so that teachers have direction. These changes are necessary so that our teachers can facilitate learning communities in which students develop enduring understandings. If approved, the curriculum will prepare our students for the twenty-first century by encouraging them to develop the skills needed to transfer what they learn to new and challenging situations.

The current curriculum is content based, age-appropriate, and aligned with the NJCCCS. However, the curriculum does not meet the needs of the twenty-first century learner because it encourages students to memorize facts and definitions. The newly formatted curriculum is based on research by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, Mike Schmoker, and Daniel Pink. It focuses on what Wiggins and McTighe call the “big ideas”, which they state will give facts and skills greater meaning. Their concept, UbD, “takes content and shapes it into a plan for how to conduct effective and engaging teaching and learning.” An UbD astronomy curriculum “makes it more likely that students achieve desired results.” Since the current curriculum is content based, it does not require students to read for purpose and develop their own viewpoints. However, Mike Schmoker says that school should be a thoughtful place. It should rouse the intellect and give children the opportunity to expand ideas and opinions. He says that “good talk” about readings will help achieve this. This is why incorporating activities that involve purposeful reading, writing, and discussion into the curriculum is essential. Lastly, Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future, proves that creativity is essential for success in the American workplace. Since our goal is to prepare students for success, we must help them hone their creative skills so that they can become leaders in innovation. Our UbD curriculum follows the advice of these great thinkers, and thus, will set our students up for success.

Fortunately, these great changes can be made without affecting the budget. However, staff development will be necessary for implementation. Over the course of the 2009 - 2010 school year, fifth grade science teachers will need to use all staff in-service days to learn about UbD lesson development. The teachers will also work in professional learning communities to develop a unit plan similar to the one attached, and will pilot the changes in the spring of 2010. We expect that our fifth grade students will become better readers, writers, creators, and thinkers. We will determine if these changes are successful by analyzing the results of the many forms of assessment described in the unit plan. If the changes are effective then curricular change in other units will be considered.

Results Now

“For students to fully develop their intellectual capacities, close reading and rereading must be joined to writing.” P.61

As the elementary principal in a 4^th and 5^th grade building, I would create the following change based on this situation. I would restructure the organization of scheduling to join Reading and Language Arts classes into a unified literacy class taught by the same teacher. Separating the two classes—Reading being homogeneous and Language Arts being heterogeneous—does not enable the opportunity to take “pen in hand” as Schmoker described, to write about one’s thoughts about a specific text.

I will work with the teachers in learning communities so that these new unit plans can be created. The plans will be created so that there is must dialogue and writing about what is read in school. If we’re looking to “develop their intellectual capacities” for the future, then this is a solution. This will be a drastic change to the culture of our school. But, the teachers will most likely be excited by the idea since they often stress about not having enough “face time” with their Reading students whom they only see for 40 minutes a day. They also stress about the lack of time for assessing and giving feedback to these students.

We will have to research the successfulness of homogeneous vs. heterogeneous for this new scheduling plan. Either way, with a group of twenty-five students, the unit plans will still need to take modifications and extensions into account, and will also need to plan for discussions including the teacher rather than with small groups.

“Weeks of nonliterary activities would be built around the reading of a single short story or novel.” P. 79

As the elementary principal of the 4^th and 5^th grade building, I would again help the teachers to work together to create units built around novels that are NOT boring, do NOT suppress creativity, but DO emphasize reading, writing, and discussion. Projects would be designed to do at home where dialogue with the teacher does not happen anyway. In school, we would use multimedia that promotes literacy such as Smartboard, blogging, and podcasts, to make class time interactive, engaging, and full of the main elements of literacy. Blogging can be used to write journal entries from the characters’ perspectives. Podcasts can be used to talk about the changes seen in a character, or examples from the text that prove a character’s personality trait. The Smartboard can be used to highlight (literally) and focus on actual text for all students to see. These uses of media will be used in conjunction with face-to-face discussion about the actual story, and not on the elements of the story or parts of a sentence.

“You can walk into any school system large and small, and ask to see samples of work that’s proficient from 5 different 4^th grade classrooms. You’ll get five radically different qualities of work.”

As an elementary principal, I will help the teachers to create a Rubric Bank where teachers can post assignment descriptions and their correlating rubrics. This can all be done prior to the implementation of learning communities. But once the learning communities are in place, the teachers will be able to use the bank to create unit and lesson plans with clearly planned assessments.

The learning communities will also be used to refine the rubrics so that they are useful and do what they’re meant to—provide a clear label for quality that helps the teachers and students. The rubrics will need to be descriptive, and will NOT need labels such as “fair,” “good,” “awesome.” What do those really mean anyway???

UbD Lesson Plan

click each page to enlarge














































I enjoyed having to deeply think through this unit which I’ve taught before. It was definitely a struggle for me, specifically deciding if something belonged under “understanding, “knowledge,” “skills,” etc. I felt that I was often repeating myself, not knowing if I was correct. It was also difficult using a pre-existing unit. I think it would have been easier and more fun using UbD to create a new unit—something I have yet to teach. I also felt guilty including text book reading and note taking in the planned activities (so I didn’t!), but now think that it would have been okay to do that as long as it would be geared toward the planned assessments, essential questions, and understandings.

I preferred the Word format because it felt more guided and structured. I was a little confused, however, when having to identify role, situation, etc. The students’ roles change slightly from class period to class period since this was a plan for a whole unit, and not just one 45 minute class period. I tried to be broad and on-topic as best I could during this part.

Additional Questions:
Is the Performance supposed to be a culminating activity? Were the planned activities supposed to be more specific—as if another teacher is supposed to be able to interpret and use this lesson plan? Should I have been more specific—including every single worksheet, reading, activity, etc in the format? Is it better to use this format when planning a unit or daily lessons?

UbD is a really interesting way to plan curriculum. In talking to some colleagues, many of them seemed familiar with the idea but have not used it in the classroom. One of them asked, “is that the method for teaching to the test?”

Mash-up

More about Did You Know

I forgot to mention that my superintendent showed Fisch's video to district-wide staff at our welcome back meeting of 2007. Looking back, I'm glad that he showed this to open our minds, but I wish he used it more productively, like we are now in this course, to decide what this means for education and what we are to do about it. My district uses a lot of technology. We have many PD hours every year about technology, and we are expected to use it daily. But I remember sitting among my colleagues thinking, what else? Is there more that we need to do?

Did You Know?

Who’s scared? I am! Thinking about how much computers will be able to do in the near future is unsettling. I don’t like the thought of being replaced my machines, and I certainly don’t like not knowing how to prepare for it. We are experiencing severe unemployment rates in the United States. The possibility of more and more jobs being wiped out because computers can do the same thing for a lesser cost and in less time means that we are about to face an even higher unemployment count. And the idea that computers will take over the human race is an obvious scary thought as well.

On the other hand, the unknowingness is pretty exciting. (I know I have pretty extreme feelings about this!) Looking back in my lifetime, and the lifetime of my parents and grandparents shows how much can be accomplished with technology. We didn’t turn out so badly, did we? I don’t think we’ll ever be able to completely prepare for the future. As Americans, we’re always creating new, better, faster, more efficient ways of doing things. Our teachers prepared us as much as they could for the future they didn’t know about, and we are doing the same. I think our job as educators is to teach about the past, teach skills, and content that we think is worth knowing NOW. We can’t see into the future, so we will have to trust that when our students enter the workforce they, among their peers, will have the skills, motivation, and personality traits to explore the future.

The most important skills we can teach our students are to think critically, to research, to experiment, to see cause and effect, to explore, to communicate, to question, to strategize, and to be creative. These skills are timeless and help prepare us for any situation in any era.

As educators, we need to commit to learning the most about technology, and passing that information onto our students as we possibly can. We must commit to stay current, but not to say goodbye to all of the information, skills, and pieces of technology that we have used thus far. We can’t write off our pasts in hopes that the future will be better. Future creations will certainly be different, and will definitely bring about change. But we won’t know what’s BETTER until we experience it. Let’s commit to refrain from saying that our past has been a waste of time. The best we can do it learn from the past as we continue to move forward. How can we possibly expect more from ourselves?