It’s been two months since my last blog post, for that I apologize. A lot has been happening in our BV Social Studies Community – lots of GREAT stuff! The past couple weeks, I have had the opportunity to meet with various committees to continue the process of building district curriculum documents and look at potential resources for our new 7th grade geography course next year. In the conversations being had to accomplish these goals, I’ve witnessed the shifts in thinking occurring within our community. Necessary shifts required to meet the needs of the 21st Century Learners sitting in our classrooms. We are deeply submerged in a pendulum shift when it comes to curriculum and instruction - moving away from a focus based on students memorizing and regurgitating content and shifting to a focus based on students developing the skills necessary to think critically and solve real world problems.
Allow me to provide a specific example. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of working with the 8th Grade Curriculum Committee on their unit guides. As many of you know, in our district unit guides, there is a section for “content/skills.” This is where we list the specific content and skills that should be covered throughout the unit. In their conversations about this section for each unit, they did an amazing job of focusing on the skills first and the content second. Eventually their collaboration led to changing the title of the section to read “skills/content,” as opposed to, “content/skills.” They felt if the “skills” were listed first, they would carry more emphasis and draw more attention from teachers using the guide to develop their lesson plans. They even went so far as to develop this subheading in the section, “Content to support skill-building,” and then listed the content one would cover. I absolutely adore this mindset as it so clearly illustrates learning in the 21st Century. Our students need to develop critical thinking skills…we need to use our content to support them in developing them and not the other way around. We cannot hope students will magically gain the skills they need to say, “analyze and interpret a variety of texts and media,” which is such an essential skill in our information overload world; or “identify the relevance of particular sources to a particular inquiry,” again such a critical skill in our present day reality where any question can be typed into a search engine, or bits of information are rapidly and widely shared through social media; or, “discuss and evaluate how perspectives shape the world they live in,” which is absolutely vital in our increasing interdependent, complex, changing and diverse world.
Allow me to provide another example. A colleague of mine gave me a compelling article to read, “Repackaging Research: Rigor and Relevance for 21st- Century Learners” by Paige Jaeger. The author makes a plea for teachers to trash (recycle) the research “packet” and upgrade their research assignments to meet the needs of “today’s hyper-connected 21st- century learners.” She writes, “If your assignment is answerable on Google, it is void of higher-level thought,” (p. 5).
She offers a series of suggestions to help library media specialists and teachers move away from “packet-learning and research” to “inquiry-based learning and research,” to help shift their thinking. Some of her suggestions include:
1) Based your assignment around an essential question, which can compel students to uncover and discover curriculum
2) Begin with the end in mind (Wiggins & McTighe’s Backwards by Design approach). Stay focused on the end in mind and I would suggest making sure your students know the end in mind before they even start.
3) Use a pronoun for engagement; make it apparent in the Essential Question. “The EQ should use a pronoun to transfer ownership to the student. The use of ‘we,’ ‘me,’ ‘you,’ or ‘yours’ will also help transfer the responsibility and excitement to the student” (p. 6).
4) Give students choice – “Nothing motivates a Millennial better than letting them choose something. This allows for a personal connection…aroused curiosity” (p. 6).
5) Make it relevant & real
6) When the project ends – make sure it’s shared. She calls this, “Don’t cheat the back end.” Students need to share what they discovered and learned…it validates the project as important and worthwhile, not to mention mimics the real world. “Where would the world be if scientists left all their research in the drawer?” (p. 7).
Bottom line, “Students should be solving real-world problems rather than fact-finding” (p. 7). I would contend this goes beyond the design of research projects/assignments. We learn about the past, to understand the present day, and predict the future. Each discipline that falls within the jurisdiction of social studies is full of real world problems that need to be addressed and solved. In order to do this, our students need to be equipped with solid, sharp skills that enable them to ask historic questions, ask geographic questions, ask economic questions, ask questions about their government, policies, laws, and understand how to investigate the answers, and analyze and evaluate the information they receive in response to their inquiries. This is what makes learning exciting and engaging, applicable, relevant and rigorous. This is 21st Century Learning. This is social studies. It’s an exciting time to be a part of the field, and especially to be a part of our BV Social Studies Community where we are working hard to discover ways to support and enhance student learning in the 21st Century.
Reference:
Jaeger, P. (2014). Repackaging research: Rigor and relevance for 2st-century learners.” School
Library Monthly, 31 (1), 5-7.
Allow me to provide a specific example. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of working with the 8th Grade Curriculum Committee on their unit guides. As many of you know, in our district unit guides, there is a section for “content/skills.” This is where we list the specific content and skills that should be covered throughout the unit. In their conversations about this section for each unit, they did an amazing job of focusing on the skills first and the content second. Eventually their collaboration led to changing the title of the section to read “skills/content,” as opposed to, “content/skills.” They felt if the “skills” were listed first, they would carry more emphasis and draw more attention from teachers using the guide to develop their lesson plans. They even went so far as to develop this subheading in the section, “Content to support skill-building,” and then listed the content one would cover. I absolutely adore this mindset as it so clearly illustrates learning in the 21st Century. Our students need to develop critical thinking skills…we need to use our content to support them in developing them and not the other way around. We cannot hope students will magically gain the skills they need to say, “analyze and interpret a variety of texts and media,” which is such an essential skill in our information overload world; or “identify the relevance of particular sources to a particular inquiry,” again such a critical skill in our present day reality where any question can be typed into a search engine, or bits of information are rapidly and widely shared through social media; or, “discuss and evaluate how perspectives shape the world they live in,” which is absolutely vital in our increasing interdependent, complex, changing and diverse world.
Allow me to provide another example. A colleague of mine gave me a compelling article to read, “Repackaging Research: Rigor and Relevance for 21st- Century Learners” by Paige Jaeger. The author makes a plea for teachers to trash (recycle) the research “packet” and upgrade their research assignments to meet the needs of “today’s hyper-connected 21st- century learners.” She writes, “If your assignment is answerable on Google, it is void of higher-level thought,” (p. 5).
She offers a series of suggestions to help library media specialists and teachers move away from “packet-learning and research” to “inquiry-based learning and research,” to help shift their thinking. Some of her suggestions include:
1) Based your assignment around an essential question, which can compel students to uncover and discover curriculum
2) Begin with the end in mind (Wiggins & McTighe’s Backwards by Design approach). Stay focused on the end in mind and I would suggest making sure your students know the end in mind before they even start.
3) Use a pronoun for engagement; make it apparent in the Essential Question. “The EQ should use a pronoun to transfer ownership to the student. The use of ‘we,’ ‘me,’ ‘you,’ or ‘yours’ will also help transfer the responsibility and excitement to the student” (p. 6).
4) Give students choice – “Nothing motivates a Millennial better than letting them choose something. This allows for a personal connection…aroused curiosity” (p. 6).
5) Make it relevant & real
6) When the project ends – make sure it’s shared. She calls this, “Don’t cheat the back end.” Students need to share what they discovered and learned…it validates the project as important and worthwhile, not to mention mimics the real world. “Where would the world be if scientists left all their research in the drawer?” (p. 7).
Bottom line, “Students should be solving real-world problems rather than fact-finding” (p. 7). I would contend this goes beyond the design of research projects/assignments. We learn about the past, to understand the present day, and predict the future. Each discipline that falls within the jurisdiction of social studies is full of real world problems that need to be addressed and solved. In order to do this, our students need to be equipped with solid, sharp skills that enable them to ask historic questions, ask geographic questions, ask economic questions, ask questions about their government, policies, laws, and understand how to investigate the answers, and analyze and evaluate the information they receive in response to their inquiries. This is what makes learning exciting and engaging, applicable, relevant and rigorous. This is 21st Century Learning. This is social studies. It’s an exciting time to be a part of the field, and especially to be a part of our BV Social Studies Community where we are working hard to discover ways to support and enhance student learning in the 21st Century.
Reference:
Jaeger, P. (2014). Repackaging research: Rigor and relevance for 2st-century learners.” School
Library Monthly, 31 (1), 5-7.