Hey everyone! I don't know about you, but after this past two months I am ready to to try to catch up with my shadow! We have been increasing our knowledge and skill immensely, beginning with Curr Mapper/Instr Planner on Aug 9-10, UbD on Sep 22-23 and then yesterday with Concept Based Learning. We now need to process all this and see how all these connect. That is no easy feat, especially when the daily world of our work tugs at our sleeves and pant legs, constantly demanding our attention to the here and now, the minute by minute decisions we must make. I hope that as we meet this month, Oct 14 and next, Nov 4, we take time to do that processing, looking at how to orchestrate things for our district.
My initial thoughts on how they connect: Concept-Based Learning is the very bottom foundational piece to taking us and our students to a deeper level of understanding. Understanding by Design is that next layer, putting the big ideas, enduring understandings and essential questions into an instructional unit and curriculum design process/format. Then the tool used for "getting this on paper" is Instructional Planner. The other part of that technology tool, Curriculum Mapper will assist all of us in seeing how well our Concept-Based, Enduring Understandings hook our ICC standards, as well as other district level standards (such as perhaps music specific standards), showing gaps horizontally and vertically. Once there, we will all be able to have much richer conversations about how to "fix" those gaps, instead of searching for them. My thoughts are no where complete, but as I try to think about how it all fits, I think I am getting a clearer picture all the time - but I believe it is because I am pretty much forcing myself to ponder on it. Since no one is stepping up to stop the world so I can catch up, I figure I better look for even more ways to work smarter.
Well, thanks for reading - leave a comment, give your thoughts a chance to be heard. Let the group know if you see different connects, think I am way off, etc. Remember we are learning together.
Enjoy the rest of this week - such beautiful weather!!
I am really seeing how all of these pieces do fit together, and I totally agree with you Kim. These 3 endeavors we are diving into are layers upon each other. I too am facing the issues with time. How to find the time to get into all of it. UBD really helped me feel more confident about how to attack the instructional planner and unit planning in general. Now the feat at hand is when to get it in and how to make instructional planner part of my daily routine. Working smarter is definitely the challenge!
ReplyDeleteLaurie Kammrad