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Survey
In order to begin the process of engaging students in the co-construction of curriculum, we provided all the students in the school with a Google Form survey in order to identify classes in each content area that students would be most interested in taking in the coming school year. From this survey, we decided to work on co-constructing curriculum based on the Social Studies course that the most number of students wanted to enroll in for the upcoming school year. From the students who had expressed desire to enroll in that course, "Conflict and Resolution", all students were offered an opportunity to engage in an extra-curricular opportunity in which they would help to design the curriculum for the new course offering. Those students who expressed an interest in co-constructing the curriculum were then given additional information and instruction as to what the work was going to look like and what the goals of the work were before agreeing to participate. In the end, 12 of the 37 students participated in the curriculum work who had originally expressed desire to be a part of the new course offering. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Analysis of Standards After a series of ice-breakers and discussions about what the goals of the curriculum work were, students broke into groups and began to analyze the High School Content Expectations and Common Core State Standards that were expected to be covered by the course. Students were also briefed about higher-order thinking skills and what words like analyze, compare, contrast, interpret, create, and describe mean in terms of the standards they were analyzing. Once students had this background knowledge, they began to work in three groups to turn the standards into objective statements (SWBAT) and develop a way in which they believe would be an engaging, meaningful, and long-lasting way to engage with the content. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Discussion of Topics and Themes of Interest After the analysis of standards and engagement strategies discussion, students exchanged their analysis and objective statements with another group. With a different set of standards and objectives in hand, each group then developed topics and themes that were prevalent in the wording of the standards and the subsequent objective statements. As a whole group, students, in a round-robin format, created a list of topics and themes that were consistent across all groups, standards, and time periods. These topics and themes would become the backbone of the new units that the students would create. From these topics and themes, students organized the standards into thematic units. Next, students looked again at the CCSS for standards related to Production and Distribution of Writing. Given the importance of producing and distributing media through various platforms and types of writing tasks, students decided the most effective way to disseminate their learning in a variety of formats was for students to begin building blogs or websites. Students determined that through this type of writing platform, students could contribute multiple forms of writing and also be able to link and share their learning and contributions across classrooms, schools, communities, and the world. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Discussion and Creation of Essential Questions During our sixth and seventh meeting, teachers and students revisited the themes and topics we had created during our previous two meetings. Students then were asked "What is it you would like to remember from this topic or theme ten years from now? What will be most important to remember?" From this jumping off point students were reorganized into groups where they discussed what they thought was important to know about the themes and topics we had created and created a list of statements and questions they thought were important. Next, each group was assigned a teacher to help them work through the statements and revise them into overarching essential questions that they thought were intriguing and that they would like to be to remember in 10-20 years after high school. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Assessment and Learning Outcomes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Creation of Co-Constructing Curriculum Website As the process of co-constructing curriculum continues to unfold, the students at Pershing High School continue to update this website with information and research that have contributed to this project. As students and teachers, we have decided that in order to contribute positively to the improvement of civic participation and agency among students in urban high schools, we must continue to share the work and progress we make in ensuring all students have a voice and are active participants in the creation of and contribution to curriculum and the means to education inside the classroom and beyond. |