What's The Big Idea? Curriculum 21 Ch.1-4 Summary

The BIG Ideas In Curriculum 21 (Ch. 1-4)
By Heidi Hayes Jacobs

1. With different expectations yield different results.  Conversely, different results yield new expectations.
• Comparing state to state or country to country is hard because each has different needs and comes from a different place.
• If we expect 21st century citizens, we should have 21st century curriculum and assessments.
• The needs of students for the world they live in needs to be considered when writing assessments or curriculum.
2. The structure of education as we know it needs updating.
• Aspects of school like scheduling need to become more out of the box. 
• The separation of subject matter needs reconsidering.  More interdisciplinary work. Expanding beyond separated periods of one class or another.
• The way we group students is pivotal to how they learn.
• The way we collaborate is pivotal in our own professional development.  Getting out of the self-contained philosophy.  
• The use of space in the classroom and out of the classroom are equally important.
• Creativity needs to make a come back in schools assessment and curriculum.
3. The way that we assess students should define what life skills we want students to have.
• Start with assessment and then develop the content and skills necessary.
• Some assessments are just more effective than others, but you have to use a variety of techniques not just one type.
• Update the types of assessments to be meaningful and influential.  
• Technology can be a great resource in helping to assess student growth.
• Use a professional development day to help change assessment ideas.
• Sometimes the content will stay the same, but the way students need to show understanding is different.
4. The curriculum itself needs to be more useful to student and global needs.
• Social Studies: Students should be studying people as rich, historical, economical, geographical ect. beings.
• Social Studies: Are we preparing our students for a global economic movement?  Will the U.S. ever be independent from foreign economic control?
• Writing & Science go hand in hand.
• Science & Social Studies are very important and yet are being neglected.
• Religion studies should be a part of the learning experience as far as social studies is concerned.
• Science is a process of living, observing, and deducing.  It is a subject that includes many of the skills essential to learning.
• As well as science and social studies vocabulary, sustainability, health and wellness, listening and speaking, and languages are also mentioned as important subjects that are not getting enough focus in curriculum.
• There is a stigma against being smart.
5. When creating content there are essential questions that need to be asked.
• "Within the discipline being reviewed, what content choices are dated and nonessential?"
• "What choices for topics,  issues, problems, themes, and case studies are timely and necessary for our learners within disciplines?"
• "Are the interdisciplinary content choices rich, natural, and rigorous?
6. When content is meaningful to students, they will embrace the learning process.
• Learning needs to have real-world connections.
• Assessments also need to have real-world applications, failures, successes.
• Involving the community in projects can really make learning come alive.
• Not many schools were build for student success. Schools need to be redesigned to fit how students actually learn.