A Note from Lower/Middle School Head Joe Remillard
We all gravitate toward what we like. If we have a stake in it and are part of a team, we like it even more. And if the goal and rules are clear, it’s even better!
This kind of thinking is a part of the current approach to curriculum design because having students “buy in” and gain ownership leads to more effective learning. Add relevance, standards and cutting edge technology and you have a very effective course.
Effective application of these ideas can be found in Mr. Crowell’s Life Science classes, where 7th graders are creating a virtual online textbook based on the course curriculum. The students are presented with unit topics and gain ownership by brainstorming sub-topics to be covered. Mr. Crowell guides the process by making sure essential concepts are covered and discouraging less important ones. Students must work collaboratively to create the entries and cite their sources as they add them to the website. They see themselves as part of a larger process that is appealing, authentic and valuable (the virtual textbook is their study guide).
Disappearing from middle school education is the teacher-centered, textbook driven, pen-and-paper, end-of-the-chapter-test instructional model. Teaching students to find, assimilate and organize information from a variety of resources teaches them to draw relevant and novel conclusions. Additionally, this creates wiser consumers of information and intelligent contributors to the wider world.
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This kind of thinking is a part of the current approach to curriculum design because having students “buy in” and gain ownership leads to more effective learning. Add relevance, standards and cutting edge technology and you have a very effective course.
Effective application of these ideas can be found in Mr. Crowell’s Life Science classes, where 7th graders are creating a virtual online textbook based on the course curriculum. The students are presented with unit topics and gain ownership by brainstorming sub-topics to be covered. Mr. Crowell guides the process by making sure essential concepts are covered and discouraging less important ones. Students must work collaboratively to create the entries and cite their sources as they add them to the website. They see themselves as part of a larger process that is appealing, authentic and valuable (the virtual textbook is their study guide).
Disappearing from middle school education is the teacher-centered, textbook driven, pen-and-paper, end-of-the-chapter-test instructional model. Teaching students to find, assimilate and organize information from a variety of resources teaches them to draw relevant and novel conclusions. Additionally, this creates wiser consumers of information and intelligent contributors to the wider world.
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