"Reading Response"

Meeting Standards through Integrated Curriculum


I’m trying to pull things out, without reiterating everything that Kayla has already focused in on :)

Something that continued to stand out to me as I read this was the fact that I have to continually be asking myself questions, assessing myself, in order to decipher what it is that I am desiring my students to learn.

Some of those questions
“What is the purpose of this unit?”
“How do we want students to be different at the end?”
“What is the most important for students to KNOW?”
“What is the most important for students to be able to DO?”
“What kind of person do we want students to BE?”

I completely agreed that the “Be” portion of the triangle could not be the smallest. I believe that without the “Be” portion, the “DO,” and the “KNOW,” have little to no relevance. It’s like knowing that the light switch will turn the light on, but having no ability to flip the switch. The “BE’ provides support for the “Do” and the “KNOW.”


Other things that stood out to me:
“Building Curriculum from standards often leads to a technical and lifeless approach to teaching content and skills”

I loved the section that mentioned Hillary Brown, which implemented the human development curriculum called Passages. I liked how she said “holistic approach nourishes the spirit of the adolescent.”
The book said that the program Passages “seeks to create a safe container for the wonder, worry, joy, and wisdom within each child to emerge, engaging the student in the learning process.”

I think sometimes it becomes easy to forget that all of those wonderful characteristics exist within each and every one of our students and our curriculum can help or hinder the nourishment of those characteristics. My goal as I move into creating my unit is that I will be able to focus on the child, holistically. I want to teach them the standards, but I also don’t want to become so standards oriented that I forget that these are each individual children that already have so much to offer. I want to see their personalities emerge through each activity that we do. I like the KNOW, BE, DO. It’s right up my alley. :)

THE END!