THE BAD NEWS: Public schools in the United States are failing miserably. THE GOOD NEWS: What we need to change is in our control.

“A guaranteed and viable curriculum is the #1 school-level impacting student achievement.”

THE PROBLEM: Traditional curriculums are dysfunctional. Toss Question Toss Question

For more information go to: commoncore.org

Architects, moviemakers, cooks, lawyers, doctors, and software coders are totally focused on achieving very specific effects, and they keep adjusting their plans and actions to ensure the product, performance, or result sought.

What specific performance goals do we have for students?

Conventional schooling is fixated on coverage of discrete content; teachers work in isolation from other teachers; teachers work with textbooks relating only to their particular content, not the institution’s goals; no mechanism exists to ensure that assessments and grades reflect coherent practice related to mission.

The idea of school has no meaning if each teacher, even a hardworking and highly qualified one, is free to teach and assess as he wishes.

The course CANNOT be the textbook! The textbook should be used as a resource, like the Encyclopedia.

We rarely have to justify what we teach, how we teach, or how we assess students’ progress.

What is the point of school? Toss Question Toss Question

The point is NOT to “get good at school” or “know stuff” in each subject.

A list of content and activities is not a plan; marching through material can never ensure habits of mind and genuine ability. Content mastery is NOT the ultimate goal of school.

The point of education in a single phrase: Worthy accomplishment, achieved by causing thoughtful and effective understanding that enables transfer.

To learn in school how to make sense of learnings in order to lead better lives out of school ; to learn now to apply lessons to later challenges, effectively and thoughtfully. “Transfer”

What high level thinking skills are we teaching?

When transferring skills, students should be able to integrate their knowledge and skills, along with various mature habits of mind, to successfully perform in situations “that they have never before encountered.”

“Transfer Skills” First Example: After learning about the three branches of government, students should propose a policy/solution to a current related issue. Second Example: After reading Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” students should be able to write a persuasive letter for a different purpose to a different audience.

What do teachers need?

1) We need a clear and powerful vision of where we want to end up, based on our mission and agreed- upon learning principles.

2) A constant and unflinching assessment of where we stand at present against the mission.

3) Timely adjustments based on regular analysis of the gap between vision and reality, between goals and results.

What do students need?

Students need to see the relationship between what they study and its application in the real-world contexts.

The POINT of Content! I want students to learn__________ so that, in the long run, they will be able, on their own, __________________________.

Students can RARELY answer these questions: Why are we learning this? How is this going to benefit me in the real world?

What should curriculum achieve?

Curriculum should spiral in two ways: (1) courses and units would be organized around a few cornerstone disciplinary tasks, towards which all teaching and learning would be focused and prioritized; and (2) the same essential questions would recur, in different forms, over the course of the entire education.

Sample Essential Questions: How is written language different from spoken language? What makes writing worth reading? What is this voice thing, anyway? Why am I writing? For Whom? What am I trying to achieve through my writing? Who will read my writing? What will work best for my audience? Why do we need grammar? How do effective writers hook and hold their readers? What makes writing easy to follow? What is the best beginning? What is the best ending? What is the best order (sequence)? What is a complete thought?

A successful curriculum shows teachers how to use the content.

What does success look like? The curriculum must show how learners are expected to use content to accomplish meaningful performances.

If we were successful, students would have: - Accomplished… - Developed autonomy in… - Used their learning to… - Faced and overcome such key challenges as… - Created… - Overcome such misconceptions and habits of thinking as…

This means far more emphasis on making clear the purpose of every exercise, every lesson plan, every unit, every term, every education.

Examples of Backward Design:

What is fair? Can math help? Four 6 th grade classes had a race of all the students. Devise at least 2 different ways to determine a fair ranking of the four classes, given the results in the table. What is the most fair way to score these students? Be ready to defend your answers. Mrs. GMr. WMr. SMrs. G ** *35**

Assessment Problems! “Tests must involve situations new to the student…Ideally we are seeking a problem which will test the extent to which the student has learned to apply an abstraction in a practical way.”

Final Assessment – “Transfer Task” Based on our study in this unit on the various measures of central tendency, and the pros and cons of using “averages” in various situations, propose a “fair” grading system for use in this class. How should everyone’s grade be calculated? Why is your system fair? How does math help us answer this question with specific reference to when and where to use mean, median, and mode.

Backwards from Goals: Meaning I want students to leave my course having understood that – The Constitution was a solution, based on compromise, to real problems of balance and limit of powers. That the compromise has long, sometimes bitter history – with many fights that are with us and will always be with us.

Backwards from Goals: Transfer I want students to transfer that understanding, on their own, to concretely address current situations: Design a government for Iraq Design a school government Role play a Constitutional Convention

What information do you strongly agree with? Toss Questions Toss Questions Why haven’t most curriculums been setup this way? What are teachers doing wrong? What other thoughts do you have?