3 Steps to a Living Curriculum

3 Steps to a Living Curriculum

Boxed curriculum does exactly that: it boxes in learning, narrows the scope of possibility, and leads kids to believe that learning is a chore. Living curriculum does the opposite: it unleashes learning, opens up possibility and adjacent possibility, and leaves kids excited to continue learning. Living curriculum grows and adapts for a richer, more meaningful learning experience.

3 Steps to a Living Curriculum:

  1. Know your students! This seems like a really obvious first step, but honestly, if you don’t know your students it will be impossible to break free of the box(ed) curriculum. How do you get to know your students? At Anastasis, we dedicate our first days of school to getting to know our students and building a learner profile. We ask all kinds of interest and passion questions, we play a card game that helps us identify their Learning Style preferences, Multiple Intelligence Strengths, and Brain Dominance, and we build a Learner Profile. To take students beyond pre-fab curriculum, you have to know them first. What are their strengths as a learner? Where do they find struggle? All of this information will make you a better guide in the learning. It will also allow your students to understand themselves as learners and their classmates as learners. It will change the ecosystem in your classroom!
  2. Break free of the box. You have to break free of the boxed curriculum before you can truly experience a living curriculum. Boxed curriculum is like teaching students through paint by number. Or like exploring the world via a map. Sure, maps are a predictable. You can see the whole landscape in a simple, two dimensional layout. They give us answers and a 10,000 foot look at a landscape. They allow us to gather some information about the world: where major landmarks are in relation to other major landmarks, what rivers/lakes/mountains we might encounter. With a map, we can chart a course and head a direction. But it isn’t living. Looking at a map is not the same as exploring the world. With inquiry, you may have a guidebook that helps along the way, but it is actually all about the journey. Where boxed curriculum is about answers, inquiry is about the journey to the answer. Living curriculum is immersive learning where students get to create their own map including the features and nuances that are important to them (this is why knowing them is step 1!). Learning is too complex and beautiful to be captured by boxed curriculum. When students are immersed in the journey, they can appreciate the scale of a mountain, the wildlife and ecosystem of a river. A living curriculum is not prescriptive, it is an autobiography of learning written by the student as they learn. A living curriculum uses inquiry because the path to learning is more about following a direction than arriving at a destination. Each year, I create a new set of inquiry guides for our teachers and students. The main inquiry questions stay the same every year (we love the PYP questions!): “Who We Are,” “Where We Are in Place and Time,” “How We Express Ourselves,” “How the World Works,” “How We Organize Ourselves,” and “Sharing the Planet.” Then, under each line of inquiry, I come up with a direction for our inquiry block and additional suggestions for different lines of inquiry that students could follow. Each block has a Pinterest board where we can collect resources for learning during the block. These are books, videos, apps, lesson ideas, articles, experiments, field trip possibilities, etc.
  3. Invite teaching partners and students to collaborate. This is the LIVING part of living curriculum. This is where the curriculum actually comes alive and changes and adapts organically as the learning process unfolds.  Pinterest is a great place for this to happen and, be honest, you are there anyway! Using our Pinterest boards, I start gathering resources I think might be useful, then I invite teachers and students to collaborate with me. As they follow a direction in inquiry, inevitably it leads their learning in unexpected places that I couldn’t have imagined. Inviting teachers and students who are doing the learning to collaborate, the curriculum comes alive. It adapts and changes and grows with us. Living curriculum. Our learning becomes fully immersive, and rich. Students are creating their own maps as they explore learning.

Want to see an example of Living Curriculum in action? Check out this example from Anastasis!

Where to find the card game we use to build our learner profile: The Learning Genome Project

Follow me on Pinterest to see our Living Curriculum grow!

Kinesthetic Digital Story Telling @aerialanimation is amazing!

I haven’t been a regular watcher of America’s Got Talent, but one of our families recently forwarded on this video of their friend Abigail Baird who is on the current season. Abigail is incredible. Her talent is Aerial Animation, digital story telling mixed with aerial dancing and acrobatics. You have got to see it!

As I said, she is incredible! This clip reminds me of a chapter in Sir Ken Robinson’s The Element. In it, he talks about the way that body movement and manipulation (the kinesthetic and rhythmic/musical multiple intelligences) are often overlooked in schools. What a shame! I love the creativity that Abigail uses to marry her talent and multiple intelligence gifting with story telling. This goes beyond just entertainment, it is a new method of communicating story. This is a fantastic video to share with your students. It is inspirational to see someone use their talent so creatively. We often think of storytelling very linearly and through paper/pencil and occasionally digital media, this is a great example of how to think outside of the box, create something new and think about all of the ways we can communicate.

If you are in an inquiry based school using the PYP, this would be the perfect video to share during the inquiry unit on How We Express Ourselves!

America’s Got Talent is on TONIGHT, you can vote for Abigail! I hope that you will vote for this incredible talent and creativity! Find Abigail on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Here is Today: a web app to put time in perspective

 

Here is today iLearn Technology

Here is today iLearn Technology

Here is today iLearn Technology

What it is:  Here is today is an interesting little web app that helps students visualize time in a new way.  Students start out by seeing a square and a title that says “here is today” with the current date.  When students click “okay” at the bottom, they are taken to a visual of the next step in.  Students can see where the day is falling within the month, the year, the century, the millennium, the epoch, the period, the era, the eon, the earth, life, oxidation, fish, insects, reptiles, mammals, birds, humans, and the universe.  Each stage of the graphic has an arrow pointing out how today (whatever day that happens to be) compares in the grander scheme of things.  Pretty cool!

How to integrate Here is Today into the classroom:  Here is Today is an outstanding way to help students understand where they are in place in time.  They can see where they are and then compare it to the larger history of the world and universe.  Obviously, this is a natural fit into a history or biology class.  Here is Today would also make a great object lesson in math and be great for studying comparison and scale.  It would also make for a great philosophical discussion as we realize just how minute the moment we are living in really is.

Here is Today is a great site for students to explore and inquire about independently.  What questions arise as they explore the site?  After students have investigated and come up with their own lines of inquiry, gather back as a classroom community and discuss those lines of inquiry and the thinking that led to them.  If you happen to follow the IB Primary Years Program, this fits in great to “Where are we in place and time” inquiry.

Here is Today would also be a useful visual on an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer where a class can observe and explore together during discussion.  The way that the site compares time is seriously smart.

Here is Today could launch an interesting creative writing assignment.  Invite each student to explore the site and to choose a view.  The story should be written based on the point of view and time that they chose.  This could be a new way to explore setting, time and theme.

Tips:  Here is Today reminds me a little bit of the Scale of Life site that I wrote about here.  Using these sites together could be pretty epic.  Talk about a great sense of our place in the universe!

Are you using Here is Today in your classroom?  Share your experience in the comments below!

The Miniature Earth Project

 

What it is:  The Miniature Earth Project is a great website that poses the question: “what if the population of the Earth were reduced into a community of only 100 people?”  Based on this assumption, the site helps students understand what the breakdown of nationalities would be, religious representation, how many people would live in an urban area, how many people would have the majority of the world income, how many would live without clean world, those that live on less than $1.25/day, etc.  The purpose of the site is to break our quickly approaching 7billion people in the world down to a number (100) that we can more easily wrap our minds around.  The point of the site is to help kids (and adults) understand the real landscape of the world and cause positive action.

There is a video on the site that breaks down the infographic in a different way.  Students can submit their own videos about the Miniature Earth.

How to integrate The Miniature Earth Project into your curriculum: Right now the Jr. High at Anastasis Academy is looking at the following line of inquiry: “Understanding our rights and responsibilities as individuals and the similarities and differences of others helps contribute to the development of world citizens.”  The Miniature Earth Project is a great place to put the world’s challenges in perspective for students.  We have been having fantastic conversations about the rights that we enjoy as Americans, and the responsibilities to others around the world that come with those rights.  Students have also been exploring rights they believe all world citizens should enjoy and what responsibility they share in making those rights a reality for those who don’t currently enjoy them.  As you can imagine, the discussion has been fascinating!

A great place to start this discussion is by asking students to create their own personal code of conduct.  What standards will they hold themselves to?  At Anastasis we talk often about managing our freedom.  Freedom comes with responsibility, it isn’t a free-for all.  We also ask students to think about what their actions would look like if it were multiplied by 7 billion people.  What would the world look like?  Is it a place they would want to live?  The Miniature Earth Project is a great place for next steps. Looking at who makes up their world, what kind of challenges are faced.  We ask our students to think about solutions to those challenges.  They are NOT too young to come up with solutions!

Since the 100 person Earth is such a manageable number, ask students to create graphical representations of each figure presented in the Miniature Earth Project.  What questions do they have based on the data?  What challenges do they see?  What common ground do we have?  What are our responsibilities?  What rights should we claim for all humans?  What are ways that we can make the world a better place for all?  What impact can a small change make on such a large population (does it change when you think about it on a smaller scale)?

Want to show students how their actions can change the world?  Share the story of the 13 year old who has the world planting a million trees!  The story of Felix Finkbeiner is an awesome one!  Equally cool for our students: we have a Mr. Finkbeiner who teaches at Anastasis.

Tips: There are great links to more information about our population approaching 7 billion.  Be sure to have your students dig into those resources to learn more!

***Want to do your part as a CHANGE MAKER in education?  Check out, support and spread the word about the Learning Genome Project!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Miniature Earth Project in your classroom!