Schooling+by+Design

Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe shared a fun metaphor. They shared that in a visit to a zoo in Australia, a group of school kids showed up. These kids had clearly been prepped with their worksheets, and more. As the kids made the rounds, one thing became evident--kids were so busy writing on their worksheets, in their notebooks, copying information from the information boards that they didn't even look at the animals. He shared this question at the end of showing a string of photos depicting these children, so focused on the paperwork they missed the experience of looking at the animals: The smart place to work is where we have control. Another assertion made was that "We don't really value what we claim to value in writing curriculum." Main points: > Stage 1 - Desired results? > Stage 2 - Evidence of Students' ability > Stage 3 - Assessment > -Long-term learning goals and mission referenced explicitly > What's the pattern? > If I retell the story, what should I include or leave out? > -What is it like? > -How does it work? > -Why is it the way it is? > -How is it changing? > -How is it connected to other things? > -What are the points of view? > -What is our responsibility? > -How do we know? > -Which method of telling time works best, when? What should you use if the best way isn't available? > -Who is a true friend? Which community helper is most important and why? > -What's the diff between a good stranger and a bad stranger? > -What happened there? What should we do when we don't agree about what really happened? > -Connect - What in my experience might help me understand and appreciate the text? > -Question, Answer.... > -Which groups did I join at birth? > -Which groups do I belong to? > -Why do people join groups? > -How do I leave groups? > -From whose viewpoint are we seeing reading or hearing? > -How are things, events or people connected to each other? What is the cause and what is the effect? How do they fit together? > -What's new and what's old? Have we run across this idea before? > -So what? Why does it matter > -Whom should we care for? How do we identify ourselves? > -What causes conflict? Why do people abuse their power over others? > -Does global interdependence help or harm the people involved? How do our economic and political choices affect others?
 * 1) Mission: Long-term reason for existence...**what you are paid to cause, as opposed to what you are paid to do**.
 * 2) What should you eventually be able to do with content based on long-term processs of school?
 * 3) The goal of school can only be found in the work of learners.
 * 4) The first job of leaders is to turn the organization's mission statement into specifics. - Peter Drucker
 * 5) We have misconceptions of how to help students reach high levels of achievement.
 * 6) Lack of backward design results in a complete failure.
 * 7) We **say** we value _ __but our curriculum writing__ _ __and our local assessments__ and our own textbooks
 * 8) High school teachers need to have a goal-focused syllabus independent of the textbook.
 * 9) A coach is results-focused, while a teacher is a content-focused.
 * 10) 3 Stages:
 * 1) If content mastery is the means, what is the end?
 * 2) Ability to use content with understanding in new situations
 * 3) I want you to learn [content] so that in the long run, you will be able, on your own to __.__
 * 4) Transfer might be defined as the gradual release of responsibility as in reading.
 * 5) **The goal of schooling is to produce autonomous, self-regulated, self-correcting behavior with no intervention cues, or prompts by the teacher.**
 * 6) The true Mission of a school is revealed by what people do, not what they say.
 * 7) Mission-building exercise: Picture the Graduate, try to envision the type of person we're trying to develop.
 * 8) To build transfer, go deeper on less.
 * 9) Big ideas-->Essential questions-->Indicators
 * 10) Interims assessments reflects standards and violate what is broader/bigger.
 * 11) Anchor curriculum around important recurring tasks.
 * 12) Require understanding and transfer of learning.
 * 13) Authenticity matters...understanding is revealed through contextualized performance, real world learning.
 * 14) Authentic tasks include purposeful writing, scientific investigation, issues debate and primary research.
 * 15) School is about sideline drills, when it needs to be about playing the game. That is, sideline drills are done in the context of playing the game.
 * 16) Use backward design in an **overt** way.
 * 17) **Schooling by Design** is about applying backward design to your school, district. It has to happen before action planning.
 * 18) To what extent do our assessments reflect what we value?
 * 19) Think Big -->Start Small -->Go for "an early win in Iowa."
 * 20) "There is no such thing as effective differentiation devoid of a high quality curriculum..The teacher's first job is always to ensure that the curriculum is cohorent important, inviting, and thoughtful, then and only then does it make sense to differentiate that curriculum." Grant Wiggins revises this in this way, "If you're differentiating crap, who cares?" Good curriculum comes first.
 * 21) Vision: What would we see IF...?This is what we are aiming for that does not yet exist.
 * 22) "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first 4 sharpening the axe." -Abe Lincoln
 * 23) Questions and understanding at the course level should refer to both "declarative" and "procedural" goals.
 * 24) Build Prototypes: Units that model the integration of long-term accomplishment with short-term content.
 * 25) I want you to learn (content)_ __so that, in the long run, you will be able to, on your own to__ __ (statement of purpose, the desired accomplishment).
 * 26) Syllabus as safeguard:
 * 1) Many textbook problems are not typical of real life situations students will encounter.
 * 2) The single most important variable in promoting long-term retention and transfer is practice at retrieval (Halpern, Change).
 * 3) Graduated prompting--How people learn
 * 4) Recurring Procedural Questions, in skill areas:
 * 1) Essential Questions:
 * 1) Primary Level Essential Questions:
 * 1) Reading Strategy EQs:
 * 1) Reference to Boyer's Basic School - "A Core Commonality": Everyone holds membership in a variety of groups:
 * 1) Overarching EQs as Program-level: All courses must address them:
 * 1) My son's teacher's EQs:
 * 1) Should students and teachers work on essential questions together? Short answer: Teachers are the experts/professionals, so core questions come from teacher.

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