DEFINING TWO RIVERS CURRICULUM

By: Jeff Heyck-Williams

THE QUESTION:

What is Two Rivers’ curriculum?  

Earlier this winter a parent approached me with this seemingly simple (albeit essential) question.  A question that I should be able to answer quickly without much of a thought.  After all, creating and coordinating Two Rivers’ curriculum is a core component of my work.  However, as with many simple questions, the question gave me pause.  

It gave me pause for three major reasons.  First, it gave me pause because in the way that it was asked it begged for a quick sound byte response, but I realized there was too much complexity wrapped in the word “curriculum” to give a quick simple one to two sentence answer.  Secondly, I made an assumption (probably unfairly) that the parent was asking about a text book series which I patently would not describe as a curriculum.  Too often textbook series and/or standards are referred to as the whole of a curriculum.  However, I think of textbooks and the accompanying materials all as tools that help us define and deliver the curriculum.  They are not the curriculum itself.  Finally the question gave me pause because here was a word, curriculum, that sits at the heart of what I do everyday and that I use pretty freely in multiple ways, and yet I didn’t have a clear definition of the word.  In fact, because I use the word curriculum in so many different ways to mean often very different things,  I shouldn’t have been surprised that I didn’t have a clear definition.  However, if I wanted to have a chance of defining Two Rivers’ curriculum for this parent or for anyone for that matter, I needed to resolve the question of just what curriculum is first.  

SO WHAT IS CURRICULUM?

The single best definition of curriculum that I have found is from John Fairhurst Kerr’s seminal work Changing the Curriculum from 1968.  Kerr writes that curriculum is, “all the learning which is planned and guided by the school, whether it is carried on in groups or individually, inside or outside the school.”  What I love about this definition of curriculum is that it has three core ideas which I feel are essential to understanding exactly what curriculum is.  To begin, Kerr defines curriculum as “all of the learning.”  This is helpful in explaining why a list of standards can never be the curriculum with a capital “C” for a school.  Schools always teach and address learning that stretches beyond the bounds of a set of performance standards.  The second part of the definition, “which is planned and guided by the school,” can’t be over emphasized.  With that simple phrase, Kerr has highlighted the intentional nature of curriculum.  There are many definitions of curriculum floating around, but when I talk about curriculum I am not talking about learning that occurs unintentionally.  For example, students often come to school and learn the lyrics to the latest rap song from their friends.  This is learning, but we don’t seek to impart all of the learning that occurs in schools.  Rather, when I am thinking about curriculum, I am thinking about all the learning that as a school we intend to teach towards.  It is this intentionality of learning outcomes that I would want to convey in answering any questions about Two Rivers’ curriculum.  Finally, Kerr ends his definition with, “...whether it is carried out in groups or individually, inside or outside the school.”  Pairing this idea with the previous ideas of the intentional learning outcomes, we have a full vision for curriculum that includes but stretches beyond individual standardized test measures as well as the confines of any classroom.  That is to say, that with great intentionality we attempt to craft experiences for students that nurture their growth as life-long learners from the moment they are first greeted with eye-contact and a smile as they approach our doors on their first day of  school all the way through to the moment that they walk out of our doors for the last time as students when they graduate as eighth graders.  That is to say, we recognize in addition to the classrooms that the hallway, playground, community spaces, and lobbies are all equally places of learning.     

TWO RIVERS’ CURRICULUM

With that said, here is how I would answer the question of, “What is Two Rivers’ curriculum?”

Staying in line with our mission, our curriculum is defined by all of the knowledge, skills, and understandings that students must learn to be successful in and outside of school in the 21st century.  Using the definition of curriculum above, we approach planning and instruction based on the learning outcomes that our students will need.  We are intentional in providing experiences in and outside of class for students that will nurture them as lifelong learners and provide them with the knowledge, skills, and understandings to be successful.

EXPERT THINKING AND COMPLEX COMMUNICATION

With this in mind, our first priority in our curriculum is in developing our students’ expert thinking and complex communication skills.  In other words, all of our curriculum whether in math, language arts, social studies, science, Spanish, the arts, physical education, and social learning is in service of helping our students to become flexible thinkers and problem solvers that can work effectively and collaboratively in diverse groups.  Loosely defined, expert thinking includes the skills of critical thinking around a fund of knowledge, schema development, pattern recognition, and metacognition: skills necessary for solving complex problems that require multi-disciplinary expertise.  Complex communication is defined as those skills that are necessary in working in teams.  These interpersonal skills include the ability to communicate vast amounts of verbal and non-verbal information, cultivate trust with others, develop understanding, and negotiate different outcomes.  Although these communication skills are the foundation of the skills students will need to be successful in a 21st century economy that requires teams of people to solve complex novel tasks, they are often ignored in school curriculum.  These aspect of our curriculum are supported by the books: The New Division of Labor: How Computers are Creating the Next Job Market by Frank Levy and Richard Murnane and 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times by Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel.  More information on 21st Century Skills can be found at http://www.p21.org/.  Building upon a foundation of expert thinking and complex communication, we consider how we infuse every experience of learning with these cognitive and interpersonal skills.  However, it is not possible to be an effective problem solver outside of any content or context.  

CORE DISCIPLINES

This brings us to the core disciplines.  I define these as core because they are the essential content and skills that schools and society have long recognized in the broadest terms to be the central curriculum for schools to impart.  Within the core disciplines, I include English language arts skills, mathematics, social studies, and science.

Standards

We begin our thinking about these disciplines with the standards.  Our school is standards-based in that standards give a framework and some definition to the content that we will cover each year.  Currently, we utilize the Washington DC standards http://dcps.dc.gov/portal/site/DCPS/menuitem.06de50edb2b17a932c69621014f62010/?vgnextoid=3e7d112f62c32210VgnVCM100000416f0201RCRD&vgnextchannel=22aba12cbf242210VgnVCM100000416f0201RCRD&vgnextfmt=default published by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education in DC.  (These standards will be replaced by the Common Core State Standards http://www.corestandards.org/ to be implemented in the 2014-2015 school year.)  As a defining document, standards list expectations for what our students should know and be able to do in each grade level.  However, as stated above, the standards as a list of basic skills and knowledge only act as a skeleton and do not define the full realm of skills, knowledge, and understandings that our students need to become successful life-long learners.  In addition, individual standards often identify very specific skills that do not carry the same weight or relevance to more general skills identified in other standards.  Thus as a document, teachers must make decisions about the resources of time and intensity of focus around any individual standard.  Thus the standards documents are not effective tools for being the sole or only central defining component of a curriculum.  That said, they do act as a framework foundation to begin our thinking about the core disciplines.  Building on these frameworks, I would like to focus for a bit on each of the core disciplines separately.   

English Language Arts

English Language Arts comprises the sets of knowledge, skills, and understandings that we use to communicate in English both verbally and in writing.  Long considered a cornerstone of American public education’s curriculum and defined by two of the three “R’s” (reading and writing), the study of English is essential for helping our students become effective members of society and lifelong learners, but what exactly is it that we are teaching when we say that we teach English Language Arts.  To define this component of our curriculum I further subdivided the discipline into three broad strands: reading, writing, and verbal skills.  

Reading

Reading has been the subject of much debate in professional literature and particularly schools’ approaches to early reading instruction.  Twenty years ago, the debate heated up between what participants of the debate termed the phonics approach versus the whole language approach.  The phonics approach can be characterized by direct instruction in the letter-sound associations that make up the mechanics of reading.  In contrast the whole language approach is often characterized by authentic experiences with reading for meaning.  Fortunately, we live in times that have seen these debates cool down and we benefit from the fruits of both of these approaches in a balanced literacy approach to reading instruction.  Thus our curriculum is defined by both teaching students the rules of the mechanics of reading as well as the comprehension strategies that good readers use to make sense of their reading.  Specifically, at Two Rivers we recognize that, as we have learned from the whole language approach, people should always read for a purpose and that students need to have authentic experiences with reading beginning in preschool.  Students read real quality literature with teachers and alone scaffolding the students towards independence.  We explicitly teach students to using reading comprehension strategies that strong readers use flexibly.  These comprehension strategies include: making connections between what they are reading and their previous experiences or knowledge, asking questions, developing inferences, creating sensory images, determining the importance or big ideas, and synthesizing ideas or plot elements into a meaningful whole.  In addition, we have learned from the phonics approach that students need explicit instruction in the mechanics of reading.  This means explicitly naming the rules utilized to construct the English language and exploring how those rules are used to construct first words and then sentences with meaning.  In defining our balanced approach to literacy, we utilize the work of Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell in a number of their books including Guided Reading, Guiding Readers and Writers, and Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency as well as their Phonics Lessons.  In addition to the works cited above from Fountas and Pinnell, teachers utilize a number of resources in planning and developing our reading curriculum including The Daily Five: Fostering Literacy Independence in the Elementary Grades by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser, Strategies that Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, and Literature Circles  by Harvey Daniels.  

Writing

Similar to reading, we believe that whenever a person writes, they should write with purpose.  Consequently, we emphasize in the teaching of writing the meaning behind creating written work.  Thus students develop their writing skills to tell their own stories as well as to communicate ideas about the content which they are learning.  As a process, they need to have explicit instruction in the process of creating written messages as well as the components of exemplary pieces of writing.  Consequently, we explicitly teach students a writing process that includes brainstorming, drafting, revising, editting, and pubishing to teach them how to shepherd a piece from beginning to end.  In addition, students need to have direct instruction the components of good writing which include developing ideas, organization, word choice, strong voice, sentence fluency, the conventions or mechanics of writing, and how to present aesthetically pleasing final work.  Our writing curriculum is heavily influenced by the work of Lucy Calkins and specifically her book The Art of Teaching Writing as well as Lucy Culham’s 6+1 Writing Traits.

Verbal Skills

Considerable research shows that verbal language development is closely related to written language development.  In addition, to become effective communicators students need explicit instruction in both speaking and listening skills.  Consequently, at Two Rivers we intentionally address students speaking and listening skills in diverse settings.  This includes working with students to develop their dialogue skills when working with partners or in small groups as well as how to make formal presentations.  For listening skills we work with students how to listen actively by engaging in comprehension strategies to understand auditory messages and to ask questions that drive their learning.  

In addition, to the recognition that students need explicit instruction in the processes of speaking and listening, they also must build both their receptive as well as expressive vocabularies.  Vocabulary learning correlates closely to future success in school, and the achievement gap is often found most explicitly between the number of words that children from affluent families know compared to the number of words that children from poor families know.  We address vocabulary with the intent of giving students multiple opportunities to hear rich vocabulary and to associate meaning and context with new terms.  This portion of our curriculum is supported by Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, and Linda Kucan’s book, Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction.  We also teach a core set of vocabulary each year to guarantee that every student is given a foundational set of terms.  For this purpose we utilize the Wordly Wise series from EPS publishing which can be found at www.wordlywise3000.com.

Mathematics

Traditionally math classes have been defined by teaching of step-by-step algorithms with the intention that students will memorize the steps through repetitive practice.  However this undermines the nature of mathematics.  Mathematics is the study of quantitative and spacial patterns.  Mathematics is not the rote repetition of procedural rules to generate answers to standardized problems.  Thus our curriculum in math is focused on teaching students how to recognize, analyze, and apply the patterns of mathematics to solve problems.  Specifically, this means that mathematics is far more than arithmetic.  Arithmetic is a component of math as a powerful tool used in explaining quantitative patterns, but it is only one essential tool in the arsenal of math skills that we want to cultivate in our students.   

With this more expansive view of mathematics, our curriculum in math emphasizes conceptual understanding and problem solving in addition to the computational and procedural skills emphasized in those traditional classrooms.  Thus as when we teach within any of the five major strands of elementary and middle school mathematics (number sense and operations, algebra, geometry, measurement, and data analysis, statistics, and probability), we are also teaching students how to solve problems that are new and problematic to them.  This allows them to build their conceptual understanding and methods of approaching a problem before learning a step-by-step algorithm.  Only after the conceptual knowledge has been developed do students begin working on formulaic procedures for solving certain classes of problems.  In addition, to conceptual knowledge, this articulation of what students need to learn includes what the National Council of Mathematics Teachers call the processes of mathematics.  These process standards articulate the skills of expert thinking that people use in solving problems within mathematics and include: making connections within mathematics and between mathematics and their experience outside of the classroom, developing and understanding various representations of quantitative and spacial ideas, the skills associated with generalized problem solving, and providing reasoning and proof for solutions to problems, and communicating they work.

Our approach to teaching math is most influenced by the model described by John Van de Walle and LouAnn H. Louvin in their text Teaching Student-Centered Mathematics.  To support our curriculum, we utilize the University of Chicago School Mathematics Projects' textbook series in our middle school and beginning in the 2011-2012 school year enVisionMATH in our elementary school as well as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' Navigation Series across the grade levels.

Science, Social Studies, and Expeditions

Science and social studies are often given the least priority in elementary schools and only in middle school when students are given discipline specific subject teachers do we see an emergence of social studies (usually heavily focused on history) and science as core components of a schools’ curriculum.  However, expert thinking and complex communication must be practiced within a context.  When we read, write, or solve problems, we read, write, and solve problems about something.  Science and social studies learning provides us with the context students need.  Thus our social studies and science curriculum are defined by giving students a rich background of information and experiences upon which to draw in practicing expert thinking and complex communication.   

Unfortunately science and social studies standards both tend to be a mile wide and only an inch deep.  Students are often expected to learn large amounts of dates and vocabulary with little expectation that they leave with understanding how all of the pieces fit together to form a coherent whole whether in history or in science.  We take an explicit stance that depth of learning is more important than breadth and thus we focus on key moments of history rather than the sweep of history in our social studies curriculum, and we focus on core ideas about design and systems thinking rather than the broad range of scientific facts in our science curriculum.  For example our fourth graders study the founding of Jamestown, the three cultures that came together there in the early 17th century, and from whose perspective the story is told instead of covering all of American history from pre-history to the American Revolution as their standards outline.  In science, our second graders study the physics of flight to design flying machine toys that are fun to play with but also illustrate how forces interact to make flight possible.  In both of these examples, the learning experiences are built first and foremost around developing students’ conceptual knowledge around the discipline in which the expedition is situated.  Consequently the fourth graders focus on perspective in the retelling of history rather than the specific dates and facts of the founding of Jamestown.  Similarly the second graders focus on concepts of experimental design and innovation rather than the facts related to flight.  That is not to say that the facts are unimportant or are not taught.  Students actually come away from expeditions with a large background knowledge about the facts related to their problem.  But more importantly they understand why those facts are important and how they can be used to explain the big ideas, the depth of the discipline in which they study.  

Founded on the concept of teaching content in depth versus in breadth, our science and our social studies curriculum is primarily delivered through learning expeditions which are centered on problem-based tasks that require the development and utilization of expert thinking  and complex communication skills.  Learning expeditions are ten to twelve week learning experiences in which students study a problem in-depth to create novel solutions to the problem.  Our work with learning expeditions is founded in our partnership with Expeditionary Learning Schools, a organization developed to promote a whole school model developed based on experiential learning.   More information on Expeditionary Learning Schools can be found at http://elschools.org.  We have further refined our approach to expeditions through problem-based learning as it is outlined in Linda Torp and Sara Sage’s work, Problems as Possibilities: Problem-Based Learning for K-16 Education.

ENCORE DISCIPLINES

In addition to our core disciplines, Two Rivers recognizes the importance of a broader view of knowledge and skills with which students should become proficient.  Consequently, we offer to every student a set of specials classes the curriculum of which I will call here the encore disciplines.  I like this term, because although our specials classes are not part of the traditional core disciplines covered by schools, they are no less essential for our students to realize their potential and become life-long active participants in their own education, develop a sense of self and community, and to become responsible and compassionate members of society.  The encore disciplines which we teach are the arts, foreign language, and physical education and health.  Each of these form a pillar of the skills, we believe are essential in educating the whole child.  

The Arts
 
I begin with the arts, an area of particular emphasis for Two Rivers.  In thinking about the arts as a discipline, they serve a unique function in our society and thus in the lives of our students.  As a means of expression, the arts afford people with the ability to express ideas and emotions that written or spoken English alone does not afford.  Because of this ability to convey meaning uniquely, the arts have the potential to allow students to understand concepts more deeply and from a broader array of perspectives.  Furthermore, the arts open the possibilities for students to express their own ideas, understandings, and feelings in ways that are inaccessible in any other format.

With this in mind, starting in preschool and carrying all the way through 8th grade we provide instruction in the visual arts and the performing arts of drama and music to all of our students as well as occasional opportunities to explore dance and other art forms.  This instruction includes art appreciation in which students learn how to receive, interpret and interact with the messages conveyed in art.  However, the core of the program focuses on developing students’ skills for self expression whether through music, drama, or the visual arts.  When possible, each of these art forms inform the study of content within the classes as they give students opportunities to explore and express the core ideas embedded in their expedition work.  

Foreign Language

Building on the learning that comes from multiple perspectives, we recognize that we live in a global society in which the interconnections between people only become more complex over time.  With this realization, as well as the recognition, that there is a window of opportunity for young students to begin learning a foreign language, Two Rivers provides Spanish language instruction beginning in preschool to all students.  The curriculum of the program emphasizes communication.  Language acquisition and communication in a multi-lingual world act as authentic complex problems for students to solve.  Simultaneously working to communicate in Spanish environments, builds students basic language skills including vocabulary and speaking skills.

Physical Education and Health

The final area within the encore disciplines that we recognize within our curriculum is the development of knowledge and skills around physical health and fitness.  The health crisis in our country demands that we acknowledge that part of being responsible and compassionate members of society is cultivating the habits of a life long healthy life-style.  Consequently, students have direct instruction in physical education which includes the essential of how to engage successfully in vigorous physical exercise as well the importance of making healthy decisions in regards to diet and physical activity.

THE SOCIAL CURRICULUM

In addition to the cognitive and interpersonal skills and core and encore disciplines described above, we affirm that the social curriculum is equally as important as the academic curriculum.  With this in mind, we define our social curriculum as both the skills related to complex communication and the intrapersonal skills students need to be independent self-directed learners.  These skills include taking initiative, persisting through a task, managing impulsivity, regulating emotional responses, taking reasonable risks, and reflecting on our work.  All of which are related to utilizing metacognition within any situation.  We support both the interpersonal and intrapersonal goals within our curriculum through Responsive Classroom.  Responsive Classroom is an approach to education developed by the Northeast Foundation of Children in which a focus is placed on developing students abilities both to regulate their own behavior in a learning community as well as for them to learn to work collaboratively to solve problems.   The Responsive Classroom approach is well described on their website http://www.responsiveclassroom.org/ as well in Ruth Charney’s work Teaching Children to Care.

REALIZING TWO RIVERS MISSION THROUGH OUR CURRICULUM

Two Rivers Mission, to nurture a diverse group of students to become lifelong, active participants in their own education, develop a sense of self and community, and become responsible and compassionate members of society, is realized through our goal.  Our goal is stated:  When students graduate from Two Rivers, they should have the cognitive and social skills to succeed in high school and college so that they are positioned to have rich and varied options for their future.  The articulation of Two Rivers Curriculum above, is my attempt to define the cognitive and social skills that our students need to succeed in high school and college so that they are positioned to have rich and varied options for their future.  I believe that only through living this curriculum in its complete fullness provides the foundation our students will need to succeed.

I leave with a final caveat.  As I have worked to define our curriculum, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that we live a rapidly changing world.  Curriculum must be equally as flexible to help our students meet those needs.  Thus I hope everyone will come to see Two Rivers curriculum and any curriculum as a living adapting articulation of what we want our students to learn.  That is to say, that this articulation of a curriculum can and should change with time.