Curriculum Liberation Front

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88869712011-08-14T01:02:12.088-04:00Curriculum Liberation FrontSome musings, rants, and solutions for curriculum in the state of Georgia—and perhaps elsewhere—from the perspective of a media specialist.Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.comBlogger351100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1137273252925336882006-01-14T16:13:00.000-05:002007-02-25T09:01:41.855-05:00Reconstitution!

Welcome, members of the Newnan Crossing Elementary Understanding by Design Liaison Group!Since we needed a place for our asynchronous collaboration, I figured why not dust off my old blog here and use it as a base camp?Why a blog? It will allow us to meet and comment and plan and collaborate without having to find a time when some/most/never all of us can be there. For example, here are your

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1111149482973468032005-03-18T07:37:00.000-05:002005-08-16T06:48:43.270-04:00New Post

There's a new post over on the new blog, Dale Says. It's about governors, business leaders, and the toughening of standards.

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1110580888883634812005-03-11T17:38:00.000-05:002005-03-11T17:41:28.883-05:00We're moving!

The Curriculum Liberation Front is moving over to my actual website, and actually becoming part of a personal blog called Dale Says. Catchy title, no?Change your bookmarks to http://dalelyles.com/blog/.I've moved all the old posts from here to there, even datestamped them the same, but alas, the comments they have not moved. Feel free to repost your comments, or to add new ones.Excelsior!Dale

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1108760533000630852005-02-18T15:32:00.000-05:002005-02-18T16:03:39.943-05:00A moratorium

I hereby propose a moratorium on the word important in any GPS enduring understanding or essential question.Today I attended a very good session for third grade teachers on "unpacking" a standard. When it got down to writing essential questions, it was amazing at the number of EQs that contained the word important. What got me to thinking about the issue was an EQ that my team wrote on the

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1106918298925460722005-01-28T07:35:00.000-05:002005-01-28T08:35:42.486-05:00GPS training

Yesterday, I got to go to a session presented by dedicated fellow professionals here in Coweta County, the purpose of which was to nudge our teachers one more step into getting ready for the GPS. First, let me say that the information was spot on, very important stuff, and that our presenters were sharp and prepared. Second, let me say why I think it was not enough. The purpose of the session

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1105446902262428882005-01-11T07:34:00.000-05:002005-01-11T07:37:12.683-05:00Our page 1 problem

Here’s the problem that crops up immediately in our study of Frederick Douglass: “Frederick Douglass was born a slave.” And what, to a 21st century third grader, does that mean? If our average 8-year-old doesn’t understand what slavery is, the whole point of choosing Douglass as part of our third-grade curriculum is lost. Here's a quick experiment: The Three Kindreds of the Eldar were the

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1105379787668739832005-01-10T13:15:00.000-05:002005-01-10T12:56:27.666-05:00Page 1

Having selected David A. Adler's Picture book of Frederick Douglass as our base text, I photocopied the pages and put them into a notebook. I've gone through every page, selecting vocabulary words; creating comprension questions; proposing activities for advanced/gifteed students. On page one, we're given his birthplace, his birthname (Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey), and the facts that he

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1104865563160162612005-01-04T13:49:00.000-05:002005-01-04T14:11:17.443-05:00Selecting a text

Happy New Year! You may recall that many of the biographies of Frederick Douglass I had been examining were too involved for 3rd graders to use as a text, especially since we had further plans to challenge them as readers with the article from the New York Times. I have gotten our choices down to two: Frederick Douglass: a photo-illustrated biography, by Margo McLoone (Capstone Press); and A

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1103210368606995912004-12-16T10:11:00.000-05:002004-12-16T10:21:53.016-05:00The real curriculum

The more I work on this Douglass project—and the deeper I get with my QCC/GPS comparisons—the more anxious I become to see the real curriculum, the thing we really have to teach, and by that of course I mean the CRCT [Criterion-Referenced Competency Test], because we won't know what the state really wants to have happen in the classroom until we know what it is they're generating standardized

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1103030444738100402004-12-14T08:18:00.000-05:002004-12-14T08:20:44.740-05:00Statistics

Whatever our role is in the new curriculum, we cannot do it without money. Sandy Bowie, at Northgate High School, sent us this article, "Data Gathering: why you need the numbers," and it's worth the reading, especially if you're in one of those schools where your budget doesn't seem to reflect your numbers or your activity.

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1102969556570988912004-12-13T15:16:00.000-05:002004-12-14T08:16:08.233-05:00Restating the question

Every once in a while, I'll restate our overriding question just to see if we've made any progress. What is the role of the media center in the curriculum, especially the new GPS curriculum? Last winter, the media specialists in Coweta County got some ideas together for a strategic plan for this issue. We didn't get very far, but you can see what we did get here. I think the most interesting

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1102968998532326782004-12-13T15:03:00.000-05:002004-12-13T15:16:38.533-05:00Some websites about performance standards and performance assesment

On Wednesday the CLF is hosting an open house for the faculty here at Newnan Crossing. (It will be interesting to see if any of them don't figure out that the Curriculum Liberation Front is just me...) I've done a nice brochure [PDF] to hand out, part of my general PR plan. I've also thrown together some websites I've collected over the last year that deal with performance standards,

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1102949208944507392004-12-13T09:25:00.000-05:002004-12-14T08:22:12.180-05:00Some more thank you's

This time I need to thank all my fellow media specialists here in Coweta County who sent me biographies of Frederick Douglass to look over. At this point, of course, most of them are not even close to being readable by third graders. The best so far is A picture book of Frederick Douglass, by David A. Adler (Holiday House), but even so it omits some key elements of Douglass's life that we would

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1101914330797375002004-12-01T10:07:00.000-05:002004-12-01T10:18:50.796-05:00A couple of thank you's

First, I'd like to thank Loren Hawkins, intrepid 3rd grade teacher here at Newnan Crossing Elementary, for agreeing to work with me on this Frederick Douglass unit. As I confessed to her, I don't think the concept of using social studies readings instead of a worksheet-oriented basal reader is going to get us anywhere, but at least we will have an example of the way learning could be if anyone

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1101825085668953622004-11-30T09:08:00.000-05:002004-11-30T09:31:25.666-05:00UBD, part 2

Deeper and deeper: I'm filling out all kinds of forms, floundering through the Understanding by Design process, trying to remain open to what it can tell me about instructional design. It's similar in a way to composing, just hammering out a melody or harmony, trying to figure out what's supposed to come next. Or, as Heidi Hayes Jacobs says, it's creative writing, and like a novelist or short

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1101255291262642202004-11-23T18:49:00.000-05:002004-11-23T19:14:51.263-05:00Understanding by Design

I have started trying to get all my Frederick Douglass ducks in a row by using the Understanding by Design "backwards design" process. I am using both the original book, by Wiggins & McTighe, and the accompanying UBD: Professional Development Workbook, by the same team. It's a long and complex process. I feel like I did back in my first classes in instructional design, when you had to go

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1100984979593755422004-11-20T15:48:00.000-05:002004-11-20T16:09:39.593-05:00An immodest proposal

Here's a thought: what if we ditched our "language arts" textbook entirely and implemented our language arts performance standards through readings in our social studies and science curricula? I'm going to use our Frederick Douglass example, with the essential question, What was the biggest obstacle Douglass had to overcome, and what in his life most helped him overcome it? What if we had: a

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1100711544037369972004-11-17T13:05:00.000-05:002004-11-17T12:12:24.036-05:00Here's a thought...

RE: thinking outside the box... Artist Chris Cobb talked Adobe Bookshop in San Francisco (naturally) into allowing him to reclassify their 20,000 books by color, for one week. So the next time a kid comes in asked, "You know that green book I had last week?", you'll have a mental image of where to look. Some amazing pictures here, and an interview here. This has nothing to do with curriculum,

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1100227830719642662004-11-11T21:39:00.000-05:002004-11-11T21:50:30.720-05:00Starting small... backwards

One phrase you'll hear in the training for the new GPS curriculum is backwards design, i.e., begin with what you want to end up with and then plan backwards from there to your activities. This idea has been around for a long time, and we've even been using it in Coweta County to some extent in the form of "essential questions." An essential question, if designed properly, provides a focus for a

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1100091025201508362004-11-10T07:48:00.000-05:002004-11-10T07:50:25.200-05:00A thought re: taxon vs. locale memory

Here's a thought I had while writing about taxon and locale memory but didn't include: the popular computer game The Sims is nothing more than humans without locale memory. You have to teach them everything, and the only way they can learn it is through constant repetition. Even the worst blockhead who ever walked through the doors of the media center doesn't have to be shown the way out, but

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1100016257410125432004-11-09T10:33:00.000-05:002004-11-09T11:05:14.943-05:00Start small

I did a complete grid with all our suspects (Revere through Chavez), along with all the standards and bits and pieces, and that was overwhelming, so I'm going to start out by focusing on just one of these people and see where it gets me. I'll start with Frederick Douglass. So, for Douglass, we have to discuss his life, examining (I suppose) how he expanded people's rights and freedoms in our

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1099946011570278962004-11-08T14:11:00.000-05:002004-11-08T21:47:36.420-05:00Definition by example

One of the classic writing strategies I'm sure we're teaching the kids is definition by example. Even if you can't define a concept in so many words, you can always give examples of the concept, and that way your reader gets the idea. I think we can tackle our problem at hand (What is the role of the media center/specialist in the GPS curriculum?) in a kind of reverse order definition by

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1099914907715282422004-11-08T06:43:00.000-05:002004-11-08T10:37:30.116-05:00Media & curriculum

So what is our role in the curriculum, new or otherwise, if we aren't implementing the ALA's Information Literacy Standards, mainly because if we try, we'll be ignored? Certainly, the good people who wrote the Georgia Performance Standards do not seem to have given it any thought. I find no hint in the GPSs* of standards that recognize even the existence of a trained media professional on the

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1099747746646882902004-11-06T08:14:00.000-05:002004-11-06T12:23:52.953-05:00About that t-shirt

If you were brave enough to click on the t-shirt link in Thursday's post, you already know this: there's a Curriculum Liberation Front store, and you can own your own CLF coffee mug, or t-shirt, or tote-bag. What can I say? What started as a small joke turned into a great way to waste a Friday night. But seriously, as I was letting my imagination run riot with all the gear, I began to think

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1099592666356023232004-11-04T13:11:00.000-05:002004-11-05T12:59:55.543-05:00Information Literacy Standards

This just in: Judy Serritella, the very fine Coordinator of Library Media Services, up at the DOE in Educational Technology...and Media [ellipsis added], sent us a link to the ALA's Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning. It's downloadable as a PDF file from ALA at http://www.ala.org/aasl/ip_nine.html. Very complete, very nice, and absolutely necessary document. And completely

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1099569627678735702004-11-04T06:52:00.000-05:002004-11-04T07:57:44.950-05:00The GPS as structure

I am just beginning to get a sense of the Georgia Performance Standards as a structure that we think will cause learning. Over the past few days, I've completed the comparison between the QCCs and GPSs for science and socials studies, K-5, and yesterday I started on the language arts curriculum. My original intention was simply to find out where the "stuff" went, how much content had actually

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1099503979920388622004-11-03T13:39:00.001-05:002004-11-03T12:52:51.143-05:00"Uses the media center..."

Remember the QCC objective, somewhere in Language Arts, Reference/Study, that says, "Uses media center and available technology as sources of information and pleasure"? That is no longer in the GPS curriculum in any way, shape, or form. Yes!! Sweet freedom! We can lock the doors, read our magazines, and eat bon-bons! All we have to do now is convince the teachers that the 1,000,000-word

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1099408238004825852004-11-02T10:05:00.000-05:002004-11-02T10:50:09.376-05:00Reviewing the QCCs

Oh my stars! I've embarked on a huge project, about which I'll write lots later on, of comparing the QCCs to the GPSs. I've finished science and am starting on the social studies curriculum, and I just want to state for the record that the QCCs were an unbelievable mess! Not that we didn't already know that, but when you have to go over it with a fine-tooth comb to see how the topics were

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1099402451549612142004-11-02T06:52:00.000-05:002004-11-02T10:02:24.436-05:00Curriculum and the two views

If we've agreed that curriculum is that structure we think will cause learning—and I guess we have, since no one has left any comments to the contrary on my previous posts—then it should be pretty clear where our two views of learning, our two systems of memory, fit into the picture. If we think that learning is a basic set of facts to memorize, then the structure of our learning will be long

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1099278116255882412004-10-31T21:32:00.000-05:002004-11-02T07:52:44.760-05:00So #2 is better?

If we think that knowledge/learning is a process, a construction of information by the learner—and I do—then can we defend it as being better than rote memorization of discrete bunches of facts? Not really. As I said a couple of posts ago, the world is divided, and this where agreement on how to teach the children falls apart. However, the difference between taxon memory and locale memory

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1098991415103187522004-10-28T16:00:00.000-04:002004-10-28T22:07:18.830-04:00View #1: further thoughts

View #1 of knowledge/learning is that it's made up of a set of discrete facts that it's the student's duty to learn and the teacher's duty to teach. One of the problems, as stated in this morning's post, is that this kind of teaching/learning relies heavily on taxon memory. There's nothing wrong with taxon learning at all. It's durable, reliable, and long-lasting, once you get it into your

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1098963483065832722004-10-28T06:56:00.000-04:002004-10-28T19:33:46.840-04:00Two views of knowledge

Here's another idea to get out there right here at the beginning: there are two basic views of what knowledge/learning is all about. The first is that knowledge/learning is a set of true things (facts, you might be tempted to call them) that are true things everyone needs to know. It is the teacher's job to get those true things into the head of the child so that the child can be an educated

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1098913538760809972004-10-27T17:16:00.000-04:002004-10-28T14:18:12.123-04:00What is curriculum?

This past Monday, October 25, I attended county-wide grade level meetings for 3rd and 4th grades at our shiny new performing arts center. I had invited myself to these meetings, part of which was to deal with the new GPS curriculum. I was greeted warmly by many people, but they all had the same question: "What are you doing here?" I explained that I sort of have a tangential connection to the

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1098874564254186802004-10-27T06:55:00.000-04:002004-10-27T06:56:04.253-04:00So why a blog?

Couldn't I just call everyone on the phone and chat? Or email? No, I've tried that, and the level of discourse never got up to any kind of critical mass. It's hard to keep the thread of conversation/argument going, especially for media specialists: we are constantly distracted by demands on our time and attention, and by the time we think, "Oh yeah, there's a new curriculum heading our way,"

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8886971.post-1098823375551638422004-10-26T16:32:00.000-04:002004-10-26T16:55:06.586-04:00Blog as Curriculum Writing

One of my favorite consultants, Heidi Hayes Jacobs, says that curriculum is fiction: anyone can write it, anyone can get better at it, and it can be changed at any time. Those of us who have been teaching for any length of time know only too well the truth of this statement, in that we know perfectly well that if we don't like a curriculum, then all we have to do is wait a couple of years and

Dalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09592144780464328852noreply@blogger.com0