Planning for academic language acquisition

Over the past several years I have been fortunate to be involved with some thinking around the area of language acquisition. This originated at my previous school, where the student body was 98% non-English mother-tongue (L1), although it has carried over into my current school as we continue to explore the role that language plays in the development of international mindedness.

One piece that has emerged specifically from this inquiry into language acquisition in an immersed environment, was the desire to create a reference tool that would be useful for teachers - particularly when the support of EAL expert teachers was unavailable. We thought that there were several aspects of language acquisition were important to consider with regards to planning for learning but also felt that most teachers didn't have time to delve into the reams of resources that we'd collated. So our aim was to produce a format that was able to be accessed easily - 'a one pager'. Here is an example of what we're currently working with:

G5 HTWW by Dave Secomb on Scribd

The tool continues to evolve as different teachers use it - for example, we're currently looking at the best way to structure the vocabulary section. It's been particularly interesting to see the German department explore this model during this academic year.

You can see that the planner is separated into seven sections. The top three outline the broad context within which the inquiry will take place. We use First Steps as a common, though not exclusive, planning tool at my school so take the language features and text structure from there. This ensures consistency between the different classes for a particular grade without limiting everyone to a specific genre. We also identify a language objective that runs alongside the content understanding (central idea) of the unit. Again, we do this to ensure consistency across the grade in terms of what we are working towards with the students. After all, if achievement and progress in terms of the unit of inquiry is contingent on the acquisition and application of specific language features then we have a responsibility as educators to scaffold this learning with the students.

The following four sections are based on the key elements for an immersive model: Academic Language; Translanguaging Strategies; Linguistic Scaffolds and Differentiation. It is an expectation that all teachers across the school differentiate for their students so we acknowledge the importance of it but direct most of our energy into developing the other three sections. Academic Language can be looked as the building blocks of CALPS (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency). Working alongside this, the linguistic scaffolds are the mortar which hold the bricks in place. Translanguaging strategies are ways of leveraging the learner's L1 proficiency to access the additional language(s) they're learning.

It is worth noting that this tool is not designed to constitute an entire language learning program for a school or grade. It is aimed at informing pedagogy in the 'Learning Through Language' focus. While it will inevitably inform practice in all three areas of Halliday's model, the primary aim is to help develop the students' proficiency in being able to use language as a tool for inquiry. We would advise that there should also be a dedicated focus on 'Learning Language' and 'Learning About Language'. It's also important to note that, although this planning tool was originally devised for use with EAL students, there will undoubtedly be some aspects that are effective for all students in the class, particularly with the focus on academic language. The IB addresses this point in their publication Language and Learning in IB Programs (pg. 24) when discussing CALPS:

"However, it cannot be assumed that even those whose first language is the language of instruction are familiar with academic language. Some may be fluent in a dialect or non-standard variety, may have had little exposure to reading and writing in the language of the school and may also need to be made aware of the types of discourse necessary for school."

Photo by Diomari Madulara on Unsplash

Compassionate Systems Framework

For the past couple of years my school has been involved with a project in collaboration with MIT and the IB, as well as several other IB schools scattered around the world. This is a guest post from our Director of Teaching and Learning, Jacob Martin, who explains the scope of the collaboration far more eloquently than I. It's exciting to be a part of this project and I'm interested in seeing where it goes and what part this framework might play in the enhanced PYP in our context.  

As a leading International Baccalaureate(IB) World School, we are frequently asked to participate in the development of educational practice at IB schools. One of the most exciting recent projects ISZL is taking a leading role in is the development of a new set of classroom practices called "The Compassionate Systems Framework". This is a combination of systems thinking tools often used in the classroom (examples here) and the development of a compassionate mindset in students. We have been truly amazed by the results of some of the works we have done with teachers and students at our school and the project is becoming a global educational project with ISZL leading the way. The project stems from the work of Peter Senge at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Young people throughout different cultures and circumstances are confronted with the complex contradictions of the interconnected, interdependent systems in our world (e.g. climate change, human migration, terrorism, substance use, etc.). An essential question for the future of education is how do we help students to reflect on, deeply understand and respond mindfully and compassionately rather than just feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of these systems. With the growing interest in education in social and emotional learning (SEL) and mindfulness today, we feel it is especially timely to show how these can combine with skills in understanding systems and complexity to establish a cognitive and affective foundation for global citizenship and what we at ISZL call “International Mindedness.”

We are looking to developing the skillsets of a systems thinker with our students, through using a variety of systems thinking tools and practices: seeing deeper systemic structures underlying surface events, and how mental models and “artefacts” shape those structures. But, even for skilful systems thinkers, complex issues can easily be seen as something outside of ourselves, or something we understand intellectually but not emotionally. “Systems sensing” skills help to “sense into” the multiple experienced realities in any complex setting.

Over time, these skills can combine to nurture a compassionate stance. One technique involves understanding the structural sources of problems that go beyond individual people or groups (avoiding a blame based culture). Another lies in staying “next to that other” and feeling with them how they feel yet with less internalisation of the other’s emotional state than can occur with empathy alone (and the consequent feelings of being overwhelmed or “emotionally high-jacked”) and yet also holding an intention for others’ well-being - which is why compassion is seen in many developmental traditions as a cultivated, refined state of being.

In this framework we deliberately cultivate compassion as an essentially attribute of the mind: to cultivate compassion is to be able to appreciate the systemic forces that influence people’s actions. It is the capacity to hold paradoxes - to see and sense the larger system with all its interdependence and interconnectedness and all the unintended consequences of human behaviour - without judgment but with real care for the system and everyone involved in it.

In a world where snap judgements and beliefs are often used to justify actions, where the media bubble we each inhabit is reinforcing stereotypes and beliefs, we are looking to provide our students with a way to see problems more deeply and to understand and find compassionate solutions to them.

Reimagining our Early Years program

This year at BHA we have several professional learning communities operating in unison. I'd like to touch on one of those in this post. The team of five teachers in the kindergarten, plus any other teachers interested in learning about the early years, are currently in the beginning stages of redeveloping their approach to teaching and learning. They're working through the valuable and collaborative process of developing a shared image of child. I was lucky enough to be able to be part of a group that went through a similar process in my previous school and found the conversations both challenging and rewarding.

So far this group has examined their own personal opinions and ideas about children. They were asked to share what they thought a child was and these responses were collated and discussed. Teachers were given the opportunity to highlight which elements of everyone's statements they agreed with and which parts they still had questions or other wonderings about. This required further discussion to unpack and will be useful to re-visit later in the year once everyone has had the opportunity to reflect on their own and others' ideas.

This graphic was created to help make visible the key words about image of child that the group valued as a collective.

The session today was spent looking at these words and talking about what they meant. There were some comments about similarities between words, about which words were by-products of our images, and which words were useful to help support the creation of our image.

The next steps for this group will be to narrow down the words to a smaller selection - we're thinking between 5 and 10 - that truly sum up our thoughts about our image of child. From this list they will map out what it is that they believe they should be doing in order to foster the growth of this image of child in their classrooms (and across the school).

It promises to be an exciting year for this group of teachers (along with the rest of the faculty of course!). We're lucky to be hosting a regional IB conference in November and all of these teachers will have the opportunity to attend workshops that will help grow their understanding of a play-based curriculum. We'll also be looking to connect with like-minded schools in order to share ideas, practices and strategies. I'm very much looking forward to being part of this process.

The 10 most important skills in 2020

This caught my attention today - an interesting summary. I'm currently in the middle of a MOOC about the assessment of 21st century skills and there's a lot of cross-over. One that particularly interested me was transdisciplinary - the ability to recognise connections and understand concepts across multiple disciplines. Despite this skill being repeatedly raised there are still very little school curricula that teach in this way. The PYP is one (although this method changes in the MYP and DP programs) but even if a curriculum framework favours this style of teaching it still takes a highly skilled teacher to implement it effectively. There are many PYP classrooms that still teach in a very segregated, discipline-based structure.

Source: Top10OnlineColleges.org

Why inquiry isn't cyclical

I just watched a fabulous video that summarises a lot of key ideas about inquiry. Although this is specific to scientific inquiry, I think the lessons are transferable to all other areas of inquiry.

What I like most about this video is the analogy of the cycle of inquiry being similar to a game of pinball. You do not progress through an inquiry in a linear manner. Instead you revisit, revise and retest ideas, questions and theories. The visual design of many inquiry cycles has lead to these sorts of questions being posted in social media forums:

 

In fact, last year Kath blogged about her own inquiry cycle in order to bust some myths relating to it.
 

The visual produced in the video includes some nice animation that hasn't been captured on the screen shot. Essentially its the grey arrows that play such a big role in this model. They rotate back and forth, in and out of the green circle. It aides to highlight the notion that when we inquire into something we're continually gathering and interpreting data, analysing outcomes, gathering feedback, exploring and discovering.
 

Perhaps the title of this post is a little misleading. There is still a cyclical process involved with inquiry, but it is important for us to remember that no inquiry (or writing) cycle was designed to be a linear, hierarchical process. It's messy, unpredictable and continuous. Check out the video for a more detailed explanation and some links to further reading.

 

Play versus work

It took me a long time to learn the difference between play and work - Al Gore, 2005.

On the weekend I watched 'An Inconvenient Truth'. The above quote appeared about half way through and really stuck with me. I think most school's mission statements should be phrased in a similar way, but that's not what this post it about...

As I've mentioned before, my colleague and I are trialling our own Outdoor Learning program this year. We've based it off our highly successful Early Years model that has been running for two years now. In one of my previous posts I spoke about the benefits of getting out of the classroom. It has really helped us to further differentiate our teaching this year and we would definitely be advocates for continuing it in the future. An additional (and unexpected) bonus is that its also allowed us to bring greater authenticity to our work back inside the classroom. Last month we spent two and half hours on a Thursday afternoon working on mean, mode and median. Many teachers like to teach maths in the mornings because they believe that their students are more alert and receptive. We were very surprised to observe the kids' enthusiasm for their work for a long period of time on an afternoon at the end of the week. The reason is because they were using real data that they had collected from their outdoor learning experience earlier that week. The learning was all about them. And they were highly engaged.

This week we thought we'd take advantage of the snowy slopes out the back of our school and do some sledding. The plan was for the students to time themselves doing three sled runs down the slope and we would then use the information for our data handling work in class. We've been exploring measurement so there were obvious links there too. I also challenged them to think about any connections recognised throughout the activity. What was the relationship between sledding technique and time taken? Between the amount of snow and time taken? Between different students? What is this thing called friction?

The students knew last week that we would be doing this activity and two of them approached my colleague with this question: "If we're going to be sledding, then what will we be learning?" This is great for at least two reasons. One, they're thinking about the learning opportunities that might be happening in the things that they're doing. Ron Ritchhart would probably classify this as a learning-based environment, where the participants look for opportunities to develop understanding, instead of a work-based environment, where the participants only see activities to be completed. They know that they're at school to learn and when the learning isn't obvious to them then they feel like they have to dig a little deeper. What a great attitude to have. The second, and probably most exciting, reason is that the kids aren't finding it easy to determine between having fun and learning. Long may it continue.

Education 2.0

I was recently shown this clever animation by Alice Acosta - summarising some key issues in education today.

Synergistic Thinking

I have been involved in an interesting conversation on PYP Threads about whether or not we should display central ideas for each Unit of Inquiry to our students. I find it an interesting thought and something that I had never really considered before. I've generally gone through a fairly standard format at the start of each UOI, unpacking the central idea with the students and discussing what each element means. For those who are not familiar with the PYP, a central idea is an overarching 'big understanding' statement that guides the inquiry and encourages students to explore and question whether or not they agree with it. It is made up of two or more concepts in relationship with each other. For example, our current central idea is "Beliefs influence people's live's" with the two linked concepts being beliefs and influence.

Referring back to the discussion about displaying central ideas, the question was posed that asked if we should display central ideas. The rationale for the question was that if we give the students the answer at the start of the unit, are we robbing them the chance of learning through inquiry - instead transmitting knowledge to them?

The discussion on the ning centered around a belief from an educational psychologist named David Ausubel. His theory describes that by providing and scaffolding enough information in advance, students are able to focus on a big understanding and this helps them to learn. By having central ideas displayed to students, they are having their attention focused on the concepts at hand.

The argument put forward in the discussion states that if we are showing the central idea to the students, and therefore focussing their attention, are we robbing them of the chance to inquire into it themselves? Considering the PYP is based on an inquiry approach to learning, I think this discussion has some merit. I'm not sure that by displaying the central idea we are providing students with any answers, as such, as we can't be sure of their level of understanding. But I have been thinking a lot about the aspects of inquiry learning lately and thought that this may be a useful technique to try out in the classroom to help encourage deeper levels of thinking among my students.

Concept based curriculum allows us to spiral the students' thinking as they go through the grades and develop deep understandings. However, it can often be difficult to assess whether or not the students have truly grasped the conceptual knowledge within the lens that they have been working. This brings me to synergistic thinking.

I first heard this term used by the first-lady of concept-based curriculum, Lynn Erickson. She recently presented a keynote speech at the IB conference in The Hague. I have attached a link for this speech here, unfortunately I wasn't able to embed it. The slideshow that she refers to during the speech is this one:

Erickson states that curriculum & instruction must create a synergy between the factual and the conceptual levels of thinking. This sort of thinking enables students to be comfortable working at both the factual and conceptual level. An example, highlighted in the video, is of a student being able to provide two factual examples that could support her conceptual 'big idea'. Another way to create this sort of thinking would be to address things between two conceptual lenses (the example in the video uses the lenses of perspective and behaviour) and ask the students to think about the relationship between the two.

By not displaying the central idea at the start of our Unit of Inquiry I am hoping to encourage synergistic thinking. The students and I have discussed the organising theme for the unit and also talked through the lines of inquiry. I have challenged them to try and create their own central idea for the unit and already I have had a couple of suggestions. They haven't quite hit the mark yet but have lead to some questions that we can explore throughout the unit. I am hoping that by encouraging the students to consider the concepts that could be connected to make the central idea they will be thinking about their conceptual understanding. By challenging them to provide examples of proof for their central ideas they will need to connect factual knowledge to a conceptual lens and this will hopefully lead to them achieving deeper understanding.

Conquering the content - The IB approach

This week is my grade level parent information evening. When preparing my presentation, I usually provide the parents with an insight into the surface actions of my classroom - the day to day teaching that they see when they come in (or get told about by their children). Last year I was caught off guard by some parents who wanted to know more about the philosophical underpinnings of the curriculum that we frame our teaching around. This year I plan on having a more coherent explanation on hand for curious parents and have been brushing up on some related readings. I've referenced the following paragraphs with the sources that I used.

Students are currently learning in an environment that is commonly referred to as the ‘digital revolution’. Increased technologies and global interdependence requires greater intellectual and academic standards that have been previously required (Erickson, L., 2008). In order to accomplish this, curriculum design must consider alternative approaches. Traditional curriculum design focuses on content coverage and often fails to emphasis higher-level, lasting ideas that are universal by nature and application (Erickson, L., 2008). It is these conceptual ideas that bring focus and depth to a study and hold the solution to the increased academic and intellectual standards that are required in today’s age. Curricula with a focus on content instead of concepts fail to engage students at a high cognitive level. A concept-led curriculum encourages students to connect the factual knowledge that they have gained to other ‘big ideas’ of significance (Erickson, L., 2008). When this happens students discover personal meaning and can see relevance in their learning. They have a greater motivation to learn because they are engaged on a more personal level.

A concept is defined as being timeless, universal and abstract (Erickson, L., 2008). It is these aspects that allow them to be applied at various times and in various contexts throughout a student’s education. This links directly with a transdisciplinary approach to learning. By studying subjects in isolation, students pick up isolated facts and ideas. While it is important to become knowledgeable in separate academic subjects, in order to a more authentic understanding students must be given opportunities to connect their knowledge across disciplines (Boyer, E. 1995). Furthermore, brain research has revealed that learning at its optimum is an ‘integrative function’ of synthesizing, organizing and processing parts of information into a whole (Caine, R. & Caine, G., 1990).

The PYP framework is organized around six transdisciplinary themes. These were developed from Boyer’s work on The Core Commonalities, which are universal experiences that are shared by all people (Boyer, E. 1995). Boyer states that all traditional subjects have a place within the Core Commonalities and, by linking learning across these disciplines, students can make personal connections to their learning and achieve greater understandings (Boyer, E. 1995). The learning in a PYP classroom is structured in this way and complimented by being delivered in a guided, concept-led approach. This allows for greater analysis, evaluation and investigation as the students consider the transferrable possibilities of the inquiry.

Boyer, Ernest. L. (1995) The Basic School: A community for Learning. San Francisco, California: Jossey Bass Inc.

Erickson, H. Lynn (1998) Stirring the Head, Heart and Soul: Redefining Curriculum Instruction and Concept-Based Learning - Third Edition. Corwin Press.

Caine, R. & Caine, G. (1990) Understanding a Brain-Based Approach to Learning and Teaching. Educational Leadership Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 66 - 70. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Alexandria, VA.

The Big Picture

The New South Wales Government has recently decided to postpone the introduction of the Australian National Curriculum by a year. They claim that the reason for taking this action is so that they can arrange to offer appropriate professional development to all staff. The NSW says it will cost around $80 million over four years to implement the curriculum and provide professional development to teachers. The Federal Government has failed to provide funding for this development and so the decision has been made to postpone the implementation.

Peter Garrett, Federal Minister for Education, has expressed disappointment at the delay and believes that 'there is no justifiable reason for the 11th hour backdown'. He doesn't believe that this is viable excuse and suggested that the NSW Government was shirking it's responsibilities in implementing the curriculum.

Last Friday a group of leaders at my school participated in an exercise that helped us to define the most dominant aspects of our individual leadership styles. There were four options:

• North - are innovators and like to take action and get things going;
• South - like to ensure that everyone's voice has been heard before making a decision;
• East - aim to see the big picture before putting a plan into action;
• West - like tick all the boxes and know every detail about the effects of the action before proceeding.

It was noted that leaders generally exhibit aspects of all four options but the task asked us to choose which one was most dominant. This helps us and others to understand how we work and what barriers we may face when working with different styles.

It seems Mr. Garrett has more of a 'North' leadership style in that he is obviously keen to get the curriculum into action. Unfortunately, he has failed to recognise one of the most important parts of what I referred to previously as 'The How' in curriculum development. Professional development of staff is a key part of effectively implementing a curriculum and adequate provisions must be made to allow for this. If this is not provided a curriculum runs the risk of falling short in the provision of quality education for its students. If this is to be the 'highest quality curriculum in the country', as Mr. Garrett claims, it is important to ensure that it is appropriately implemented.

Curriculum - Part VI

The final part of THE HOW is concerned with how the Leadership creates and maintains culture within a school and also how the school is managed to ensure that the curriculum is being implemented.

In order to become a learning-focused school, there are several factors that need to become embedded in the culture of a school and support curriculum coherence. In order for culture to develop, effective leadership is required. This involves initiating the core competencies highlighted in my previous post (moral purpose; understanding change; relationship and knowledge building; coherence making).

The factors that support a culture of authentic achievement include:

• Shared norms and values
• Focus on student learning
• Reflective dialogue
• Deprivatisation of practice
• Collaboration

The goal for the leadership team is to make these factors implicit everyday for the school.

The Management involves creating and maintaining effective structures and processes for the allocation of people (P), time (T) and resources (R) to achieve the school's mission through the implementation. These structures and processes can include systems such as:

• Job descriptions (P)
• Meeting agendas and schedules (T)
• Team structure and hierarchy (P)
• Purchasing systems (R)
• Professional development opportunities/systems (P)
• Budget allocation (R)
• Strategic planning (T)
• Coaching and mentoring (P)
• Physical space - eg. facilities and materials (R)
• Hiring policies (P)
• Timetable structure (T)
• Appraisal system (P)

Leadership can never be effective without good management

During the creation of a culture, leaders need to consider the factors that may affect curriculum implementation. These can occur at a school level and include things such as:

• The personality, relationships, knowledge and skills of leaders.
• Whether or not the school community believes students will or won't be disadvantage by curriculum changes.
• The flexibility of the curriculum design.

They can also occur at a teacher level and include things such as:

• Teacher beliefs and values.
• Subject knowledge (essential teacher readings are a good way to develop this).
• Disposition towards reflection
• Pedagogical content knowledge (how do students learn?).
• Willingness to share and collaborate with colleagues.
• Level of influence with other faculty members.

When all of the elements addressed in my posts combine, a coherent curriculum can be achieved. A coherent curriculum is the key to the alignement of vision, mission, learning targets, pedagogy and assessment. I would like to thank Gordon Eldridge and Sasha Marshall of the PTC for leading a thoroughly informative workshop on curriculum leadership, from which I synthesised much of this information.

Curriculum - Part V

THE HOW - This part of a curriculum is concerned with how the faculty will get 'The Who' to achieve 'The What'. Part of this involves an agreement on the teaching strategies that will be employed and part of it involves the leadership that should happen for this to take place. By-products of leadership (culture, management and creation) will be discussed in the next post.

CORE INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES:

These are the teaching methodologies or strategies that are essential for successful learning in the implementation of a particular curriculum. These can be organised around a 'premise'.

A premise should be research-based in order to facilitate best practice,

for example:

Premise - Students learn about excellence through exposure to models of excellence in both product and process

Instructional Strategy - Teachers will model the process of construction of text and/or jointly construct an example of text every time a new genre is introduced.

By having a core selection of instructional strategies, a school can be more aware of how they are implementing their curriculum. It is, however, important for school leaders to decide how closely they will require their teachers follow these strategies. Some schools might mandate the practice and others might leave it more flexible.

LEADERSHIP:

The framework for leadership below is authored by Michael Fullan and summarises the competencies that leaders should use in order to create a culture that supports authentic achievement. In doing so, leaders need to consider the context, which includes: past history; present beliefs; values and assumptions; and present practices.

Moral Purpose - In simplest terms, means 'acting with the intention of making a positive difference'. In education this positive difference can be referred to as 'causing learning.

Understanding Change - While it is essential for leaders to understand the change process, it is also important for them to understand the context they are dealing with for each group or person.

Relationship Building - If relationships improve, things get better. If they stay the same or become worse, ground it lost. Effective leaders encourage purposeful interaction and problem solving.

Knowledge Creation and Sharing - Good leaders create environments that favour the exchange of ideas, provide opportunities to share and foster a moral commitment to share knowledge. Turning information into knowledge is a social process, and good relationships are required if we are to share and create knowledge.

Coherence Making - Involves making sure that the culture a leader wants is supported by the management structures. This is an on-going activity that leaders address. They need to ensure that valuable patterns and practices are recognised and retained.

Curriculum - Part IV

THE WHETHER: This part of the curriculum refers to us knowing if we are achieving what we've set out to do. The key part of this is assessment. Assessment is the systematic collection, analysis and recording of information about student learning.

Fenwick English created a framework to describe the way curriculum is constructed. He refers to the written, taught and assessed curriculum in his model. In the diagram below I've also included 'The Hidden Curriculum', which isn't an official part of curriculum planning, but is something that I think still deserves recognition.

The crossing over sections of the venn diagram refer to specific parts of the curriculum. Things that are written and assessed, but not taught, include skills, attitudes/dispositions and external assessments. Those that are taught and written, but not assessed, could include some parts of PSHE. Things that are taught and assessed, but not written, could be instances that are referred to as the 'teachable moments' that occur during lessons. The Hidden Curriculum is what students learn that is not written, taught or assessed. This could include, among other things, social cues that they learn in the corridors or playground.

A school's assessment policy should be based around its definition which includes:

• Perspective
• Purposes
• Principles
• Practices
• Policies

The policy could be organised around the different types of assessment that occur within the school:

The types of assessment listed in the table above may be commonly referred to by different terms. It is important to ensure that all staff have a common understanding of what each type of assessment entails and why they are being used at the school. The assessment types listed above are:

• External - Assessments that are designed, selected, and controlled by another person or group, apart from the class teacher. Typical examples of external assessments include standardized and commercial reading tests. These assessments have been used as indicators of both the educational achievement of students and the quality of instruction in schools.
• Common - Assessment that is given to a group of students where the data is used by multiple teachers. These can include grade wide reading, writing or numeracy assessments. Their purpose is to determine the understandings and competencies for a grade or level.
• Chunk - Chunk assessments are those that are given within a class at the end of a chunk of learning, such as a Unit of Inquiry. These assessments measure individual progress and determine the level of understanding a student has reached as a result of a chunk of learning. The data from these assessments is used by the individual teacher. An example could be a contextual task given by the teacher based on a unit of work.
• On-going - Similar to the chunk assessment, on-going assessment tasks also measure individual progress and the data is used by the teacher alone. The difference between on-going and chunk assessments is that on-going pieces can be administered throughout the learning to provide a clearer picture of how the students are progressing through their learning and what directions they need to be taken in next. An example of this could be a quiz.

Research has shown that a well-written assessment policy can be a conduit for sound curriculum development and instruction. An assessment policy should be clearly and concisely written - and contain more than just bullet points! There also needs to be adequate support for the practices necessary to implement the policy - this includes plans for the provision of professional development.

Curriculum - Part III

THE WHAT

'The What' indicates what we want our students to understand, know and be able to do.

Understanding is a term that I think it is important to clarify as many people can have different beliefs about understanding. I define understanding as the synthesis of skills, knowledge and attitudes/dispositions in action. When someone is able to transfer these attributes to new and different situations they are demonstrating understanding.

An inter-disciplinary curriculum is important in order for students to explore content that is relevant to them. By relating to their own lives, our students are able to make greater meaning of their learning. When constructing inter-disciplinary curriculum, the following format can be followed. The separate categories are explained below.

What we want students to understand, know and be able to do can be grouped by standards. Standards indicate the sort of knowledge and understanding we want the students to have by the end of their education. They frame the knowledge and link the conceptual understanding across the school to ensure that all of the learning is coming from common conceptual goals. They also provide meaning for the content and prevent the teaching of individual topics.

There are two types of standards - Conceptual and Procedural. Conceptual standards are the big understandings that students are expected to develop and deepen over time. Procedural standards are concise statements that describe what a learner is able to do as a result of mastering a particular set of trans-disciplinary skills.

CONCEPTUAL STANDARDS should be:

• Conceptually driven
• Revisited using different illustrative content

Example: Group membership entails the acceptance of reciprocal rights, roles and responsibilities within a cultural value system.

PROCEDURAL STANDARDS are linked to specific skill groups.

Example: Skill group - Language for Learning
Learners are able to use language effectively to achieve a wide range of purposes with a wide range of audiences.

Standards are continually explored throughout the course of a student's education. In order to achieve this effectively, we can write descriptors - referred to as 'next level downs'. They are called this as a collective because, depending on the background, people refer to them by different names. I will be using the terms 'benchmarks' and 'indicators' to differentiate between conceptual and procedural next level downs.

BENCHMARKS: Explore specific aspects of a conceptual standard. They can form the 'central idea' of a unit. Benchmarks are written to be appropriate to a specific grade level and are closely tied to assessment of understanding.

Example (exploring the conceptual standard example above): Age group - Early Childhood

Groups have rights and responsibilities based on what they agree is important.

INDICATORS: Are a concise description of the individual skills that contribute to the ability expressed in the standards. They must be (i) assessable and (ii) purposeful.

Example (exploring the procedural standard example above):
Learners are able to structure, sequence and connect information in texts in ways that are most likely to achieve their purpose.

Concept driven curriculum is sometimes questioned by stakeholders who believe that conceptual knowledge is 'flowery' and robs the students of the chance to develop useful skills. On the other hand, some practitioners question the importance of teaching specific skills when the focus should be on conceptual understanding. It is extremely important to include both types of standards. Procedural standards allow students to achieve conceptual standards and, therefore, demonstrate their understanding. By creating clear standards, a curriculum is coherent for all involved in its implementation.

Curriculum - Part II

Curriculum is comprised of:

• The Who - Students constructing understanding.

• The Why - What is the driving purpose of the school?

• The What - What do we want the students to understand, know and be able to do?

• The Whether - How will we know?

• The How - How will we get them there?

THE WHO:

Consists of a profile of the students. It is a description of the students in the school/classroom in terms of what makes them diverse and similar including: language, culture, previous experience, achievement levels and interests.

THE WHY:

The Mission - a statement of the school's driving purpose in relation to its particular 'who'. It should be:

• Concise.
• Tightly connected to the learning that takes place in the classroom.
• Indicative of the kind of students that the school aims to produce.

Curriculum - Part I

Over the next few posts I am going to summarise my understandings about curriculum. I was going to do this separately but thought that the purpose of my blog is for me to think through my understandings so it is the perfect place to express this. Feel free to question anything I've written if it doesn't make sense!

What is curriculum?

A school's curriculum is key to its operation. It should reflect the values and beliefs that are outlined in the mission and can be seen as a 'road map' for enacting the mission. Curriculum is developed in order to cause learning.

Learning occurs when we add new knowledge or skills OR when we consolidate knowledge and skills that we already have. Learning enables us to achieve understanding, which is skills, knowledge and dispositions/attitudes in action.

Learning:

The main goal of curriculum s to cause learning. Learning can be separated into two types - conceptual learning and skill/process learning.

Conceptual learning is happening when students are:

- Connecting new knowledge to prior understanding and to important concepts in order to construct theories of (i) how things work and (ii) why things are the way they are.

- Testing their theories in different contexts in order to (i) refine them so they have more and more explanatory power and (ii) see, when, where and how they apply.

Skill/Process learning is happening when students are:

- Comparing their performance to expert performances in order to identify ways to improve.

- Practicing a skill or process in order to make their performance more and more automatic.

Curriculum commonly includes both conceptual and skill/process learning in their design. These will be explained in greater detail and context in following posts.