we don't have a curriculum either. when i first started teaching, 2 years ago, the principal handed me a set of standards and told me to teach them. we have a text book and a lot of material to go with the book, but our reading dept. doesn't use them, except on rare occassion, like when we want to have a shared text.
dalton public schools embrased UbD, Understanding by Design. We now have our own in house trainers, and every teacher must go through the program at some point. We create our own units and use trade books for teaching. our middle school just implemented a book room, hundreds of books (sets of 6 each) from level S to Z. Actually, we got a lot of lower level books as well. You can look up backwards design, understanding by design on google, and it's an interesting read. you might also google literacy collaborative, a reading/writing holistic type workshop that mirrors the work done by fountas and pinnel, nanci atwell and lucy calkins. i like the idea of not having a curriculum; there's so much freedom because we dont' have big money tied up in a package program. then, of course, you could argue that our standards are the curriculum, and this is pretty much true. the single most important thing for my students is for them to read. using trade books makes them real world readers, and they know it. all year long, students hear brief lessons about reading, and then they read. i'm wondering this: do most of the school systems you all work for use a specific program, or are you makiing up your own curriculum like we are at dps? lynn, email me anytime at [EMAIL PROTECTED] i'd love to hear about your progress. caroline _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
