Planning Concept-based Curriculum

What’s the Big Idea?Seeking Enduring Value Beyond the Classroom

Linda Kateeb, Ed.D.Manager

Professional Development, Differentiation

Reflection

The greatest enemy to understanding is coverage.

–Howard Gardner

Without good instruction, there can be no effective differentiation.

Goals of the Session

Investigate examples of differentiating instruction.

Explore how the use of concepts and essential understandings plays a vital role in differentiating instruction.

Consider how to "equalize" opportunities for each learner, giving appropriate levels of challenge while learning the same concept and essential understandings.

Brain ResearchThe brain cannot retain lots of unconnected facts.

We know from brain research that students need to see patterns and connections. And if they have no way to make sense of this massive amount of information that's coming at them, they tend to get confused. It just becomes traipsing over trivia.

–Lynn Erickson, from an interview with Leslie J. Kiernan, 1997.

How Knowledge is Structured

Facts Concepts PrinciplesDiscrete pieces of information believed to be true May typically fall within topicsExample: Westward Movement

Early American settlers migrated to the west.Many settlers traveled in wagon trains.

Ways of organizing or categorizing things that have something in common Example:

Concept of migration is a way of viewing Westward Movement ...a way of organizing facts about the settlers' experiences

Ideas and deeper understandings that give meaning to the concepts (essential understandings, generalizations, "big ideas”)Example:

"People migrate to meet a variety of needs" "Migration may lead to enhanced opportunity or greater freedom."

What is a Concept?

What is a concept? A concept is a mental construct. It's an organizing idea. Concepts are timeless; they never change.

–Lynn Erickson, from an interview with Leslie J. Kiernan, 1997.

Why are Concepts Important?

Concepts are very important when you are looking at a topic, because they serve as a conceptual lens. They allow you to rise above a topic and look at it with a different perspective.

–Lynn Erickson, from an interview with Leslie J. Kiernan, 1997.

Creating a Differentiated Task

When you're creating a differentiated task, you really aren't about the idea of trying to find something totally different for each student to do. What you really are trying to do is have all of the students focus on the same big idea or essential understanding.

–Carol Ann Tomlinson, from an interview with Leslie J. Kiernan, 1996.

The Equalizer

FoundationalConcreteSimpleFewer FacetsSmaller LeapsMore StructuredClearly DefinedLess IndependentSlower

TransformationalAbstractComplexMore FacetsGreater LeapsMore OpenFuzzyMore IndependentQuicker

Differentiated Lesson Examples

Read each lesson description Grade 7 language arts or Grade 2 social studies

Analyze the differentiated lesson tasks Identify where they fall on one or more of the

equalizer continuums

Student Progress

In any particular task, students themselves start at different points on a continuum. So the teacher is trying to start the students where they are on the continuum and move them along that continuum as fast and as far as they can.

–Carol Ann Tomlinson, from an interview with Leslie J. Kiernan, 1996.

Professional Reading

Curriculum and Assessment: Two Sides of the Same Coin (Educational Leadership, May 1993)

Mapping a Route Toward Differentiated Instruction (Educational Leadership, September 1999)

Five Standards of Authentic Instruction (Educational Leadership, April 1993)