Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Tying the Curriculum Together with Essential Questions

As I reviewed our curriculum map today, I began thinking about our idea of tying the curriculum together with essential questions.

Our curriculum overall basically responds to these questions:
  • Who are we and where do we live?
  • People near and far, past and present
  • Attributes, characteristics, traits, and properties: details that make a difference.
  • Creativity and imagination: dare to dream
  • Advocacy: Self knowledge, expression, choice and voice
If we look at our many curriculum parts, we can tie the parts together with these themes.

If we were to grow this more, we could start and end each leg of the year with thoughtful discussion, reading, and expression of the theme. Then we could embed the theme in the study we do.

As we reach for deeper learning and teaching, we need to reach for greater depth in what we teach and how we teach it. Identifying unifying essential questions and addressing those questions throughout the learning and teaching is one way to do this.