Academically Challenging Content
Planning_inclusive curriculum.pdf"The fastest way to turn eager young students into 16-year-old dropouts is to expect too little of them...and ‘dumb’ down their education." Richard W. Riley , former US Secretary of Education
In D79, many of our students have had unfulfilled educational experiences in schools before arriving at our doors. It is a mistake to treat their previous experiences in a deficit based model, and to assume that we must rely on remedial instruction in order to help them "catch up". On the contrary, we must challenge our students in order to accelerate their learning and help them top compete with any other student in NYC and beyond.
The main hallmarks of our approach to content are below, as is a link to our high school equivalency curriculum.
While our high school programs utilize school designed or city-wide curriculum resources, all of our high school equivalency programs utilize a common curriculum. We are continually striving to ensure that our curriculum meets all of the hallmarks below. Our expectation is that all D79 HSE programs are utilizing this curriculum.
Units of Study
In D79 we believe that curriculum needs to be organized into units of study that have several key components, many of which are spelled out in the paper to the near right written by Nonie Leseaux and Emily Phillips Galloway. In short, the units should:
Tackle a "Big Idea" throughout the course of the unit
Have a wide range of texts related to the Big Idea
Ensure that there is core unit vocabulary
Ensure the most important tasks /processes are repeated from unit to unit
Ensure that there is an emphasis on the production of academic language -both written and verbal -in each unit.
Our D79 HSE unit template on the far right reflects how our units are organized in this fashion.
Advanced Literacies Instruction -Spotlight on Instructional Units of Study.pdf
Different Perspectives
In our units we strive to have a range of texts that, in the words of Nonie Leasaux in the article above, "that are of various text types or genres (descriptive, narrative, expository and argumentative), and that represent a range of perspectives and authors from different historical periods, cultures, and belief systems. It is through using a range of texts and working to integrate the information and perspectives across texts that supports deep learning of content as well as fosters familiarity with the language of text and the unique organizational structure of each text type. Also, in answering the "Big Idea" in the Unit Overview, students can grapple with important questions from the point of view of others.
The article to the right, The Power of New Perspectives by Kathleen Cushman and Wendy Baron, is a great tool for understanding why it is so important to bring multiple perspectives into instruction and has many concrete examples of how to do this in a classroom.
Through Others’ Eyes - New Teacher Center _ New Teacher Center.pdfConnect with Students
The most important question to answer in a classroom is "Why are we learning this?" Often the answer is simply "To pass a test". However, that answer does not motivate or inspire students or teachers. It is always important to think about the way that the content we are teaching connects to student lives.
The two resources to the right provide some concrete ideas on how to do this.
Making It Relevant_ Helping Students Connect Their Studies to the World Today - The New York Times.pdfMaking a Real-World Connection.pdfCulminate in Projects
Every unit should culminate in a project that somehow involves extended writing. Every unit is the HSE curriculum has both a traditional assessment and an extended writing task linked to the essential questions in the unit overview. Projects involving writing allow our students to communicate what they have learned to increasingly diverse audiences. projects make what students are learning become "real".
There are many resources about how to establish culminating more detailed projects for students:
Edutopia has a Guide for Project Based Learning
The Cult of Pedagogy has an extensive blog post with resources on project based learning