[ola] Re: curriculum maps?
- From: Thomas Hinkle <thinkle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ola@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 07:15:12 -0500
I think mapping out a sequence of skills makes a ton of sense and is
probably more useful in many ways than mapping out a series of content
goals. For each of those, you might also lay out how you would assess it.
For example, for NH speakers, you might imagine a map that built clearly
toward intermediate skills...
- Building community and vocabulary (listing, chanting, routine q/a pairs)
- Building sentences (focus on moving from list to full utterance)
- Asking questions (focus on how to ask good questions)
- Describing with detail (focus on stringing together sentences into
descriptions)
- Telling stories with gestures
The question is, do things ever lay out that linearly? I'm not sure they
can or do. That said, it certainly does seem reasonable to me that you
would plan to begin with student's in their comfort zone (listing, say) and
wait until you'd built community to start stretching a lot, and it makes
sense to think you would want to focus your energy as a teacher on
stretching the language abilities of kids (sentences, describing,
mini-narration) rather than on hitting little atoms of language (preterit,
house words), etc.
Of course, as I mentioned in the other thread, I'm also thinking about ways
to make a curriculum map that covers vocabulary areas as well, but doing
that ends up putting you a bit in conflict with the goal of keeping
language student-generated/student-centered.
Tom
Tom
On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 3:12 AM, Cathy Bird
<cathy.bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> Calysta - I was just thinking of this same question as I tossed and turned
> tonight. My train of thought followed yours: I plan to highlight the topics
> of skill development in my second year classes. We have been mostly focused
> on describing up until recently, so that will be the topic of November. It
> still needs lots of revisiting and I am formulating an activity for
> circumlocution that is akin to a life-size game board (more on that as the
> idea grows into reality). December has been a boom of comparison
> (especially hot is Gale vs. Peeta) that I plan to take into January for
> sure, just so I can use the Senor Wooly activity someone sent in a post!
> One of my classes is begging to talk about future and past (imagine all
> sorts of arm motions signing 'yesterday'), so that will also factor in but
> more as a framework for comparing and narrating.
>
> I am not sure that this follows the suggestions Darcy/OWL have made,
> however, but it is so late that I can barely remember my name. I know that
> a focus on the curriculum triangle (students/teacher/everything else) will
> allow you to declare a topic and still have room to grow it organically. I
> believe that declaring a skill topic will do much the same thing, and I
> found that it really helps me to bring my thoughts back to that skill when
> I hit that 'what next' moment in a class.
>
> Cathy Bird
> Middle School French
> Colorado Academy
> 303-986-1501, x.2622
>
> ------------------------------
> *From: *"Calysta Phillips" <cphillips@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> *To: *ola@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> *Sent: *Thursday, December 19, 2013 9:24:01 PM
> *Subject: *[ola] curriculum maps?
>
>
> Hi all,
> A quick question before we head out on break and I mull over January
> plans. I forget how Darcy addressed this at our conference... how would I
> write a curriculum map of the next term if I don't really know where I'm
> going?
> Could I do it by skills? Technically, we're working on all the skills all
> the time: questioning, describing, analyzing, comparing, etc...
> Someone give me a clue. If it doesn't say specifically the TOPIC we are
> covering, how can I lay out a direction (both for myself and the
> administration)?
>
> Mil gracias!
> Here's my favorite typo of all: Feliz Ano Nuevo
>
> Teehee!
>
> Calysta
>
>
--
Thomas Hinkle
English & Spanish Department Coordinator
Innovation Academy Charter School
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