I am a huge fan of the work by Wiggins and McTigue. Our district has been using the idea of backwards design for a while. It makes planning and writing curriculum maps tons easier.We plan our maps for reading and writing aligning our standards to our integrated science/social studies curriculum. We're also an Expeditionary School which fits in nicely with planning our expeditions and designing performance assessments with rubrics. We plan as a team since we either teach LA/SS or LA/SS or Math.
Here is a link to one of the best sites I've found that explains backwards design with guiding questions and curriculum mapping. http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/6-12/Curriculum%20Mapping/Index.htm Maybe this will help. Perhaps this has been around for a while, but in my humble opinion, the idea of rich topics, with student inquiry and assessments that really display what a student knows and can do is rarely done well. I have been teaching this way for a long time and it still is challenging to create authentic assessments. Lise _______________________________________________ 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
