Caroline writes: > 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? > Pam writes: A lot of the specific program, but a little bit of own curriculum too. My district paid WAY too much money (something along the lines of $5,000,000+) to Learning Focused Strategies for a 3 year contract. They sent trainers to the district who worked with several teachers from each grade level and state standards to design curriculum maps. They created Essential Questions to go with the maps. A time line for most subject areas and grade levels to approximately follow. They push the use of graphic organizers, cooperative learning, and similar tools. I don't mind the program too much (it has some extra hoops to jump through, but overall is what I was doing already). What makes me crazy is that the district spent so much money on a canned program when all they had to do was create a team within our talented district to put together Kagan's Coop. Learning, CRISS, UbD, Gardner's Mulit-Intelligences, and a strong amount of Marzano. That is all that LFS strikes me as. Jeesh, we had all the tools, they just needed to be put together. I'm sure that in house, they could have paid master teachers and administrators FAR less than $5,000,000 to do what LFS has done. It also would have had better teacher/administrator buy-in than having a mandated program shoved down our throats.
Pam Tempest Team Neon-6th Gr. ELA Hudson Middle School http://nlcommunities.com/communities/tempest "The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn." John Lubbock ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. _______________________________________________ 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
