Interdisciplinary Design for a Middle-Level Curriculum

 

How does your understanding of young adolescents and middle-level philosophy (interdisciplinary curriculum) affect curriculum planning? 

“Just because students know things, doesn’t mean they understand it.” (McTighe, 2013)

              I LOVE the above quote from Jay McTighe. So often the emphasis seems to be on getting the right answer, learning for a test, or standardized test scores but the real goal in education should be to teach and assess for understanding not necessarily just accuracy. And it starts with students being able to understand why they are learning the material in the first place.

              Let’s begin first with the key idea that was in most if not all of the material for this module – Backwards design. This concept seems to be a key component of successful curriculum and lesson planning especially when a team of middle-level teachers are focused on an interdisciplinary delivery of ideas and concepts. By starting with goals, the team can find commonalities among the content areas and prioritize those that they should focus on across all classrooms. Teachers then can share common language around the reason for the unit and desired outcomes, reinforcing the learning process for all students on the team. I thought Grant Wiggins boiled the idea down well: “Really think hard about what your long-term goals demand of short-term teaching, learning, and assessing.” (Wiggins, 2012) If we, as educators, only focus on the short-term, we could miss bigger and more impactful benefits of this teaming design for our young-adolescent students.

I also really liked how Jay McTighe emphasized that assessments need to be deeper than surface level. They shouldn’t only measure the knowledge but the understanding of the course content. I am reading a book, Hope and Despair in the American the City, and in it, the author tells a story of an American History Middle School teacher he met. Each year, the teacher assigns his students the task of writing a short story explaining the establishment and growth of our modern day government. It is a year long project that the students revisit and revise as they gather more information. At the end of the year, the students then visit a third-grade classroom and use their short stories to teach these younger students the history of our American government. (Grant, 2022) What a great way to measure a student’s understanding of a year’s learning while giving them the authentic task of teaching another student?

              Understanding goals, authentic assessments of not only knowledge but understanding, and synergy between the disciplines has the added benefit of student lead learning and increased autonomy (Wiggins, 2012) which is something young adolescents are craving in their curriculum and every day lives. It was evident throughout the above mentioned video how enthusiastic students were that they talked to about not only what they were learning but how. I appreciated that the administrator who they interviewed mentioned that students could articulate the why behind learning now with the UbD program in place.  

This idea of designing a unit or backwards design is something I have not had much exposure to in any of my classes, placements or even in my own schooling experience. However, it does seem like this concept may have been one of the reasons professors list the desired learning outcomes on a syllabus at the beginning of each semester. I usually find that section of the syllabus overwhelming and sometimes meaningless because I don’t have an initial understanding of the topics.  I want to take that experience that I have as a student and ensure that I am creating better understanding of learning goals and outcomes for my future middle school students. I liked how one student in the video “What is UbD?” said, am I’m paraphrasing, “I like how I understand how this applies to the real world now vs. learning it in several years when I have my first job.” And using the real-world is a great way to create real values in learning for them.

I am looking forward to my fall placement and student teaching to get more practice in the use of both backwards and interdisciplinary unit design!

 

References

Grant, G. (2022). Chapter 4: There are No Bad Schools in Raleigh . In Hope and despair in the American city: Why there are no bad schools in Raleigh (pp. 101–102). essay, Harvard University Press.

McTighe, J. (2013, July 17). What is Understanding by Design: Jay McTighe. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8F1SnWaIfE&t=85s

Wiggins, G. (2012, February 10). What is UbD? Grant Wiggins Answers, with Video Cases. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsDgfC3SjhM&t=31s