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Re: Detroit schools replace junk books with $40 million of digital
junk
Posted:
Nov 8, 2009 8:22 PM
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What if, districts did not focus so much on textbooks and instead used the standards directly to craft units and lesson plans that fit the students they were serving? (Differientated Instruction)
What if, teachers and experts from their fields were to use standards as lesson objectives, and designed assessments that were clearly aligned and linked to specific performances and products within learning cycles?
What if, they included several different kinds of opportunities for students to apply new learning in real-world and meaningful contexts?
What if, multiple constructive assessments were designed to address specific standards and data was collected and analyzed?
What if, lesson activities were included in units that support conceptual development and higher-order thinking for all students?
What if, enrichment activities were designed that require not only higher-order thinking, but also the ?transfer? of newly acquired skills, knowledge, and dispositions to a variety of unique situations and problems having significance in the real world?
What if, a rich variety of resources were to facilitate meeting content standards and extended literacy across the curriculum?
What if, (but not limited to) the creative use of technology, multimedia labs, mini e-units, material artifacts, primary sources, and guest speakers were incorporated into teacher designed units on a regular basis?
What if, each resource in teacher designed units served an identifiable purpose?
What if, teachers were to chose to use certain textbook sections aligned with unit goals and textbooks were not be the mainstay?
What if, authentic trade nonfiction such as newspapers, journal articles, books, videos, magazines and internet resources will provided content as aligned with standards embedded in unit designs at the classroom teacher level rather than by huge curriculum publishers?
What if, analysis of student progress was grounded in assessment results that were tied directly to the achievement of content standards and the unit goals?
What if quantitative and qualitative data were combined to evaluate individual and whole-class achievement?
What if, multiple assessments that were aligned with the content standards were designed at the same time as learning objectives were identified - before any lesson activites were crafted?
What if, rubrics and other assessment instruments all had clear directions and scoring procedures that would facilitate valid and reliable interpretations of learning?
I personally believe that textbooks have their limitations. First and foremost, kids get bored. The problem with textbooks isn?t getting information out of them; the problem is staying awake while reading them. Because few books outside of school are written in the same style as a textbook, reading textbooks does not prepare kids for much of the authentic nonfiction reading the will do in their lifetimes.
What if nationwide, these principles learned from Understanding by Design (Wiggins % McTighe,2005) were applied and most textbooks were used only as door stops?
What if, the percieved need to funnel so many education dollars on textbooks and curriculum from huge publishers was reduced and we instead channeled those funds into teacher professional development and authentic learning resourses in our schools nationwide?
Might this be a recipe for success for our nation's teachers and students?
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