Synthesis Theme 4: Curriculum Creation

In my synthesis this week I want to respond to the questions that a couple people who commented presented me with.   What inspired me to develop a richer curriculum is when I looked at my classroom one day and realized they were all bored. Heck I was bored.  After I gave the same lecture for the 4th time in one day and watch students copy down the same notes so they could memorize the same boring facts I really wondered what kind of teacher I was.  When our school district embarked on a mission to compare opur curriculum against Daggott’s 4 quadrants or rigor, relevance and relationships I realized nothing I was doing in class we what Daggott referred to as Quadrant D work.  This Quadrant represented coursework that was done at the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy and applicable to real world unpredictable situations.  I think if someone wants to develop a deeper richer curriculum the place to start is with Daggott’s 4 Quadrant work.  While I embrace Doll’s 4 R’s I think to have something to measure your current curriculum and lessons against to actually see how rich they are you need a tool like Daggott’s 4 Quadrants in order to assess lessons.  I thinks Doll’s 4 R’s would be great conversation starters for interdisciplinary work.  Presently I am not involved in interdisciplinary work but a truly rich curriculum would have those connections between subject areas.  Where you have to start is a curriculum map so that each content area can see what is being taught when in each subject area.  There is some curriculum mapping software that each teacher enters what content they are teaching when, all in a large spreadsheet intended so that each principal knows what is being taught each month in the building.  What if this tool was also available for teachers to see opportunities for interdisciplinary work? What is besides subject alike professional learning community meetings they were cross content.  So PLC meetings with say 9th grade science, language arts,  social studies, math and art.  There goal was to create one project for the year or semester that was cross curricular.  The possibilities for cross content is endless if the right base is provided.  I do believe that before cross curricular can happen rich curriculum within the each individual content or teachers classroom must be developed first.