Parallel Curriculum Model

1. Parallel Curriculum Model A plan for moving every child toward expertise

2. Define curriculum Review curriculum components Define curriculum models Overview of PCM goals and purposes Definitions, goals, and purposes of each parallel Illustrations of each parallel Decisions and next steps Our Advance Organizer

3. The Word: Curriculum • Latin: Running course • Scotland 1603: Carriage way, road • United States 1906: Course of study • United States, 1940: Plan for learning (study)

4. What is curriculum? Curriculum is a design PLAN for learning that requires the purposeful and proactive organization, sequencing, and management of the interactions among the teacher, the students, and the content knowledge we want students to acquire.

5. Some of the components of a comprehensive curriculum unit • Grouping and Pacing • Products • Resources • Extension Activities • Differentiation • Content • Assessment • Introduction/Closure • Teaching Strategies • Learning Activities

6. Characteristics of Exemplary Curriculum • Powerful knowledge goals, representative or generative topics, and big ideas • Advance organizers that clarify prior knowledge, future activities, and expectations • Motivating introductory experiences • Challenging and active learning activities • Authentic resources and products • Aligned assessment strategies and growth criteria, feedback, debriefing, transfer and extension opportunities, interaction, and support • Interest-based applications and extensions • Modifications that attend to powerful student differences

7. What is a curriculum model? A model is a format for curriculum design developed to meet unique needs, contexts, and/or purposes. In order to address these goals, curriculum developers design, reconfigure, or rearrange one or more key curriculum components.

8. The Framework Underlying All Curriculum Models KEY CURRICULUM COMPONENTS Intro Content Modifications Extensions Resources Assessment Grouping Teaching Learning Products

9. Reasons and Rationale for a Curriculum Model Based on Student Differences • Why should we differentiate our curriculum? • What kinds of student differences should we address? • How will we develop or revise curriculum to address these differences? • What should we expect from differentiation?

10. Learning is our Business • We want to ensure and increase student learning and achievement. • Learning begins with attention to students’ prior knowledge, motivation, attention, effort, and perception. • Different learners have different levels of prior knowledge, motivations, effort, and learning styles. • If we attend to learner differences we can make our curriculum more efficient. • Efficiency, effectiveness, and planning increases the quality of curriculum.

11. Differences Among Learners • Students have different levels of prior knowledge and cognitive abilities (Vygotsky/Bloom/Lu/Kulick) • Some students need, prefer, or learn best with a logical, sequence of main ideas that explain the structure of a topic or discipline (Bruner/Taba/Tyler) • Other students prefer to think in analogies and to see relationships among and across ideas (Gordon/Sternberg) • Many students prefer to see how ideas are used in the world (Dewey) • Still others need to see the personal relevance of ideas and topics to become motivated to learn (Wigginton/Summerhill)

12. So, how does PCM provide qualitatively differentiated curriculum? Opportunities to learn the core knowledge (enduring facts, concepts, principles, and skills) within a discipline Opportunities to learn about the numerous relationships and connections that exist across topics, disciplines, events, time, and cultures Opportunities to transfer and apply knowledge and/or use the tools and methods of the scholar, researcher, and practitioner Opportunities for students to address or develop intrapersonal qualitiesand develop their affinities within and across disciplines

13. What is the Parallel Curriculum Model? The Parallel Curriculum Model is a set of four interrelated designs that can be used singly, or in combination, to create or revise existing curriculum units, lessons, or tasks. Each of the four parallels offers a unique approach for organizing content, teaching, and learning that is closely aligned to the special purpose of each parallel.

14. The Parallel Curriculum Model CURRICULUM OF CONNECTIONS CURRICULUM OF PRACTICE CURRICULUM OF IDENTITY CORE CURRICULUM KEY CURRICULUM COMPONENTS

15. Why Four Parallels? • Qualitatively differentiated curriculum isn’t achieved by doing only one thing or one kind of thing. • Students are different. • Students have different needs at different times in their lives. • Students’ styles, talents, interests, environments and opportunities are different. • Students have different levels of expertise.

16. Core: The essential nature of a discipline Connections: The relationships among knowledge Practice: The applications of facts, concepts, principles, skills, and methods as scholars, researchers, developers, or practitioners Identity: Developing students’ interests and expertise, strengths, values, and character The Parallel Curriculum: Four Facets of Qualitatively Differentiated Curriculum

17. The Core Curriculum addresses the core concepts, principles, and skills of a discipline. It is designed to help students understand essential, discipline-based content through the use of representative topics, inductive teaching, and analytic learning activities. The Core Curriculum:Definition

18. The Curriculum of Connections builds upon the Core Curriculum. It is a plan that includes a set of guidelines and procedures to help curriculum developers connect overarching concepts, principles, and skills within and across disciplines, time periods, cultures, places, and/or events. This parallel is designed to help students understand overarching concepts and principles as they relate to new content and content areas. The Curriculum of Connections: Definition

19. The Curriculum of Practice is a plan that includes a set of guidelines and procedures to help students understand, use, generalize, and transfer essential knowledge, understandings, and skills in a field to authentic questions, practices, and problems. This parallel is designed to help students function with increasing skill and competency as a researcher, creator, producer, problem solver, or practitioner in a field. The Curriculum of Practice: Definition

20. The Curriculum of Identity is a plan that includes a set of guidelines and procedures to assist students in reflecting upon the relationship between the skills and ideas in a discipline and their own lives, personal growth, and development. This parallel is designed to help students explore and participate in a discipline or field as it relates to their own interests, goals, and strengths, both now and in the future. The Curriculum of Identity: Definition

21. What does “Parallel” mean? • Each parallel has components that align with each other. • Parallels can be used singly or in combination. • Each of the parallels is of equal value and use with a variety of students or with an individual student at a variety of times. • The choice to use a particular parallel should be strongly related to learners’ profiles, the subject area, content goals, related units, lessons, and tasks.

22. Ascending Levels of Demand Ascending levels of intellectual demand is the process that escalates one or more facets of the curriculum in order to match a learner’s profile and provide appropriate challenge and pacing. Prior knowledge and opportunities, existing scheme, and cognitive abilities are major attributes of a learner’s profile. Teachers reconfigure one or more curriculum components in order to ensure that students are working in their zone of optimal development.

23. Why Provide Ascending Levels of Intellectual Demand? • To honor differences among students • To address varying levels of prior knowledge, varying opportunities, and cognitive abilities • To ensure optimal levels of academic achievement • To support continuous learning • To ensure intrinsic motivation • To provide appropriate levels of challenge

24. Ascending Levels of Intellectual Demand Take Into Consideration Students’ ……. • Cognitive abilities • Prior knowledge • Schema • Opportunities to learn • Learning rate • Developmental differences • Levels of abstraction

25. Vary the depth Adjust the abstraction Change the complexity Make contexts and examples more or less novel or familiar Adjust the pace Use more/less advanced materials and text Provide more/less scaffolding Provide frequent/intermittent feedback Provide/let students infer related strategies Infer concepts from applications and problem solving Provide more/fewer examples Be more/less explicit/inductive Provide simpler/more complex problems and applications Vary the sophistication level Provide lengthier/briefer texts Provide more/less text support Require more/less independence or collaboration Require more/less evidence Ask for/provide analogies Teach to concepts before/after examples Teach principles before/after examples or concepts Ascending Levels of Intellectual Demand

26. What are the purposes for the Parallel Curriculum Model? • Provides teachers with a comprehensive framework with which they can design, evaluate, and revise existing curriculum • Improves the quality of the curriculum units, lessons, and tasks • Enhances the alignment among the general, gifted, ESOL, and special education curricula • Increases the authenticity and power of the knowledge students acquire and their related learning activities • Offers teachers the flexibility to achieve multiple purposes • Reinforces the need to think deeply about learners and content knowledge • Uses high quality curriculum as a catalyst for observing and developing abilities in learners • Allows flexibility to address varying needs and interests of learners

27. Ten Unique Things About PCM • Defines curriculum and curriculum models • Describes the 10 components of curriculum design • Unifies various purposes for differentiated curriculum • Identifies specific goals for each parallel • Describes how curriculum can be used to address the affective domain • Describes specifics for increasing intellectual challenge • Treats all parallels as equal in value • Supports an inclusive approach to special education • Addresses collaboration between ESE, gifted, and general education • Stresses the development of talent and expertise for every learner

28. The Core Curriculum addresses the core concepts, principles, and skills of a discipline. It is designed to help students understand essential, discipline-based content through the use of representative topics, inductive teaching, and analytic learning activities. The Core Curriculum

29. Core is not…….. • Cultural literacy • Basic skills • Regular education • curriculum

30. Categories of Knowledge • Facts: A specific detail, verifiable information • Concepts: A general idea or understanding, especially a generalized idea of a thing or class of things; a category or classification • Principles: Fundamental truths, laws, doctrines, or rules, that explains the relationship between two or more concepts • Generalizations: A generalization is a principle or concept that can be applied across topics or disciples • Skills: Proficiency, ability, or technique, strategy, method or tool • AttitudesSelf-knowledge of appreciations, values,and actions related to a topic that are affective in nature

31. Guiding Questions within the Core Curriculum • What is the essential content within this discipline? • What are the powerful concepts, principles and skills within this discipline? • Which topics best represent the core content discipline? • Which topics are developmentally appropriate for my students? • How might I help students construct an accurate scheme of this discipline? • Which resources, activities, and products provide opportunities for students’ analytic thinking about core knowledge? • How might I assess student learning?

32. The Curriculum of Connections builds upon the Core Curriculum. It is a plan that includes a set of guidelines and procedures to help curriculum developers connect overarching concepts, principles, and skills within and across disciplines, time periods, cultures, places, and/or events. This parallel is designed to help students understand overarching concepts and principles as they relate to new content and content areas. The Curriculum of Connections: Definition

33. What kind of connections • are we talking about? • Connections across time, events, topics, disciplines, cultures, and perspectives • Connections to self, other texts, and other people • Understanding of intra and interdisciplinary • macroconcepts • Understanding of intradisciplinary • generalizations • Understanding of interdisciplinary themes

34. Guiding Questions within the Curriculum of Connections • What are the major concepts and principles in this discipline? • Which of these major concepts and principles link to numerous topics, people, events, time periods, cultures and other disciplines? • Which topics, events, people, or time periods best represent these intra or interdisciplinary connections? • Which topics, events, people, or time periods are developmentally appropriate for my students? • How might I help students construct a more comprehensive scheme of this discipline, related topics, and other disciplines? • Which resources, activities, and products provide opportunities for students to think metaphorically about macroconcepts, principles, and generalizations? • How might I assess student learning?

35. The Curriculum of Practice is a plan that includes a set of guidelines and procedures to help students understand, use, generalize, and transfer essential knowledge, understandings, and skills in a field to authentic questions, practices, and problems. This parallel is designed to help students function with increasing skill and competency as a researcher, creator, producer, problem solver, or practitioner in a field. The Curriculum of Practice: Definition

36. What is meant by the Curriculum of Practice? Real world applications Practitioner Problem solver Researcher Creator Producer

37. Why might we use the Curriculum of Practice? • Allows students to function as a practitioner, a producer, a researcher, a problem solver, or a creator in the discipline • Allows students to assume a leadership role in conducting their own research • Provides a rationale for the persistent student question, “Why is this so important to learn?” • Provides students with the tools and methods for independent learning • Provide a means for exploring the daily lives of professionals in the discipline • Offers students the opportunity to learn how to use and apply the skills of the discipline in real world situations • Supports transfer and application

38. Guiding Questions within the Curriculum of Practice • What are the common problems, practices, issues, needs, and questions within this discipline? • Who are the practitioners, researchers, problem solvers, and contributors within this discipline? • What are the powerful cognitive, research, reference, learning, communication, and methodological skills within this discipline? • What kinds of products, services, research, or investigations are typically conducted in this discipline? • Which problems, practices, issues, needs, and questions are developmentally appropriate for students? • Which resources, activities, and products provide opportunities for students’ to act like a practicing professional within this field? • How might I assess student learning?

39. The Curriculum of Identity is a plan that includes a set of guidelines and procedures to assist students in reflecting upon the relationship between the skills and ideas in a discipline and their own lives, personal growth, and development. This parallel is designed to help students explore and participate in a discipline or field as it relates to their own interests, goals, and strengths, both now and in the future. The Curriculum of Identity: Definition

40. The Identity Parallel • Emphasizes the role of the individual within a content area • Provides opportunities for self exploration • Supports an individual’s search for affinity, affiliation, and knowledge of self • Offers a sequential plan to address increasing levels of interest and commitment to a field

41. Guiding Questions within the Curriculum of Identity • What are the various interests, abilities, and learning preferences of my students? • Which topics, skills, opportunities, and careers are related to my students’ profiles? • How might I link my students’ profiles with the content I am required to teach? • How might I introduce my students to professionals, organizations, and role models in their areas of interest and strength? • How might I help my students discover their own strengths and affinities? • How might I identify, measure, and help my students reflect upon their growth and progress toward self-actualization? • What is our long-term plan for supporting my students’ self-actualization? • Which opportunities and activities are appropriate for my students at this stage of their development ? • Which resources, activities, and products provide opportunities for students’ self-reflection and personal development?

42. Where do standards fit in with this picture? National and state committees of content experts • Identified core concepts, principles, generalizations, skills, attitudes, and applications in various content areas. • Spiraled the content across grade levels SSS are aligned with the “Big Ideas”

43. What is a standard? A content standard is a declarative statement that identifies the essential knowledge in a given subject area that students should attain as a result of instruction. Performance standards, or benchmarks, specify ascending levels of understanding across various grade levels.

44. Products Definition:Performances or work samples created by students that provide evidence of student learning Purpose: To assess student growth, to provide for student reflection, to monitor and adjust instruction, to evaluate students Characteristics:Aligned with the content goals, teaching methods and students’ learning needs; varied; authentic; motivating; efficient

45. Assessments Definition:Varied tools, techniques, and criteria teachers use to measure students’ acquisition of knowledge Purpose:To ascertain the extent to which students have attained the knowledge contained within the learning goal(s), to make decisions about future areas of emphasis Exemplary Characteristics: Aligned with the learning goal, reliable, valid,varied, efficient, equitable, motivating, have a low baseline and a high ceiling

46. Core: Assessments • Assess students’ prior knowledge with regard to the representative topic and core concepts, principles, and skills. • Useful assessment formats include: concept maps, journal entries, reflections, graphic organizers, charts, diagrams, tables, and collages • Evaluate the extent to which students have mastered the core concepts, principles, and skills of the discipline(s). Ask for definitions, synonyms, examples, classification, and explanations. • Use rubrics to measure student learning over time. Measure the quality/depth of conceptual understanding and guiding principles.

47. The Relationship Between Assessment and Curriculum Prior KNOWLEDGE PREASSESSMENT Reveals critical differences among students. Guides teachers’ decisions and planning TEACHING AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES AND FEEDBACK ON-GOING & POST ASSESSMENT

48. How might we use a particular parallel? • Design a unit • Revise a unit • Design a lesson • Revise a lesson • Design a task • Revise a task • Use in the regular classroom • Use it in the gifted or ESE program • Use it will all students • Use it with some students • Use different parallels with different curriculum components • Use one parallel while another teacher uses another parallel • Use one parallel after another teacher has used a different parallel • Move back and forth between parallels within the same unit • Use a parallel as an extension of a core unit • Use parallel activities as optional activities for some students

49. Who might design PCM curriculum? • Classroom teachers • Special education teachers • Vertical teams • Inclusion teams • Grade level teams • Curriculum developers • Subject area departments

50. With whom might I use the PCM? • Individual students • Small groups of students • Entire classes • Students with specific interests and affinities • Students who are currently unmotivated by traditional curriculum • Students with advanced levels of prior knowledge • Students with latent strengths and abilities • Students with advanced cognitive abilities