Shifting from standards to concept- Step 1

I will begin a year at a new school, with new-to-me curriculum, and I will only be there for a year as we will have orders to move summer 2022. This school was created to fill a void as English-speaking schools that would allow for families to bring children with them into countries without the current infrastructure to have a school. Therefore the curriculum was created so that a non-educator could come in pick up the curriculum and do a decent job at exposing students to the information they would be exposed to back home.

So obviously there is a great deal of room left for inserting best practice. I’m taking the time over the summer to pick apart the standards of the school and do a little matching with common core standards and then creating concept-based units. Why add the common-core? I figure might as well make units I could easily recall if needed in the future to easily adjust or build off of should I end up in the same grade level again. Additionally, I figured if I make these common core aligned I will possibly find collaborators via the net that would give me insight, feedback, and great ideas.

This post was just to give an insight into how I’m starting.

I have printed all the standards and cut them out and then arrange them into how I currently think they best go together. I will be teaching Cultural Studies, Literature, and Writing so all courses that will intertwine nicely. Anyway, the school I’m at already has units created for each subject. In each class, we must cover 10 units- however, there is a caveat that as long as the standards are covered there is flexibility in how they are taught. So I laid out the units Cultural Studies and then matched up to how they might fit best with the literature units, and then added the writing units to that.

This first round is not super in-depth- it’s a first gut feeling at what could work to allow for more interdisciplinary units that lend themselves to reinforce the concepts I am trying to focus on. After doing this I see I have a few year-long units that will focus on reflection and analysis of students’ own growth and understanding, as well as considering how each historical time period falls onto a timeline and considering what ripples those time periods we can still evidence of today.

Specifically what these year-long units would include are the mechanics of writing and grammar usage, creating goals for our reading, and using data from the MAPs test to see if there are some areas the data suggests that students can work on more. For cultural studies, the year-long units will also consider trade and cultural diffusion and therefore will be revisited as we look into different empires and cultures throughout history. So consistent analysis and considering what may have happened before, after, or simultaneously and why it matters to consider the influences they may have had on each other and even lessons and impacts on modern-day.

So Step- one did take some time, but I decided not to use too much brainpower, but rather go with first gut thoughts. Then I did a re-read with fresh eyes about a week later to allow for some better pairings. PLUS I will also keep in mind that even after I go through the steps of preparing decent units, current events may throw me for a loop and I will need to remain adaptable, OR student interest, experience, and knowledge may lead to a revamp. Remember these aren’t just our units as teachers, these will be our units as a team of learners that includes all the members of the class.

Soon I will share a loosely outlined unit- created around concept-based learning in Step 2 of this series.