Curricular Questions
Is this interesting to kids?
- If no, reassess what in fact might be interesting to kids and work from there.
- If yes, how might you increase that interest and find new angles for exploration?
What is the engagement hook for this learning experience?
- Why will kids care about this standard(s)/learning target(s)?
- What experiences can you build into the learning experience that will increase engagement/relevance?
What are your essential questions?
- Are they actually essential?
- How are you using the essential questions to ground the learning experience?
Who is learning the hardest/doing the most work?
- What are you currently doing to and for students that could be done by and with them, instead?
- How much are you talking at kids? How might you do less?
How much of the student is present in the experience; does who they are and what they think have an opportunity to drive their learning?
- Where in this learning experience can students make decisions?
- How are you helping students to sharpen their tools for this type of experience?
How much flexibility can you build in to allow for increased student agency?
- For each prescribed part of the learning experience, is there a flexible way for students to demonstrate their learning?
- For the summative assessments, how might you offer significantly different options to demonstrate learning?
How might you increase the level of complexity?
- What is the current level of the formative and summative assessments?
- How might you increase the level of those tasks and instructional activities?
What different kinds of 'knowing' can you infuse in your learning experiences?
- What types of texts and multimedia can be offered as options for obtaining information?
- How might you increase choices in resources that help students gain the background knowledge to effectively use the information for higher levels of complexity and application?