I would like to comment on two ideas from this weeks reading in “Meeting Standards Through Integrated Curriculum”. The first revolves around aligning teaching and assessment strategies with external mandates, or standards and state assessments. If students are expected to answer questions with higher order thinking skills on state assessments and to meet state standards then they should be asked these types of questions in the course of their learning to become familiar with the level of thinking and the depth of subject knowledge that is required. For example, asking students in an assessment to recall the places Columbus visited versus comparing the explicit and implicit motives for his voyage with a compare/contrast bubble chart require different levels of understanding and so teaching the teaching strategies during the course of learning need to reflect the level of knowledge we want our students to have.
The second comment I want to make is regarding the tension between accountability (mostly regarding state standards and assessments) and relevance in teaching methods and curriculum. I agree in changing the perspective from the two being mutually exclusive to co-existing together and being necessary for the success of students. I love metaphors so the way I think of accountability and relevance is as if I am looking at a map of the United States. By using a political map of the U.S. we get a broad picture of how to get from Washington to Kansas by going Southeast. This represents the big picture ideas and connections we get from interdisciplinary studies.
Political Map of the U.S.
However, it would be difficult to actually make it to Kansas from Washington without a Road Atlas identifying the important and specific roads and turns to take on our way. The Road Atlas represents the little picture and details of standards that are represented by accountability.
It is important to have both of these maps to get to Kansas and it is important to have both the big picture of interrelated concepts that provides relevance for students as well as the standards and assessments to guide specific coverage of learning targets so that students exceed standards and deeply understand subject matter and concepts.
Resources:
http://www.mapsorama.com/map-of-the-united-states/
Miss Worthing's Teaching Portfolio 