This document outlines a plan to build an integrated curriculum at a school using the metaphor of a river journey. It proposes organizing the curriculum around grade-level themes that connect to the river, with disciplines contributing content related to the themes. Skills would be defined and broken down by grade level to facilitate integration. The curriculum structure involves grouping faculty and courses by grade levels to coordinate major assignments and ensure an integrated experience for students across disciplines. Professional development for faculty is seen as important to support the transition to more integrated, experiential teaching and assessment.

1. Building an Integrated Curriculum: 2010 VAIS Annual Conference, 2009

2. I. Rationale: Why consider integration?

3. A fortunate convergence of the PRAGMATIC and the IDEAL :

4. Differentiate our school: we have an incredible resource: the river

6. Be mission driven: Great journeys begin at the river . . . Journeys to self-confidence, purpose, identity

8. Provide what is best for our students in a rapidly changing world

9. A changing world: Robinson, Pink, Fox, etc. Skills before content Changing role of teachers

11. We want all types of learners to succeed: how do our students learn? In many ways.

12. We want to enable meaning, to teach for value beyond the classroom

13. Enabling students to find that value creates meaning: CONNECTIONS MAKE MEANING

14. Our aspiration: To engage in lifelong learning and the critical use of information. To this end, we are committed to a college preparatory curriculum that is integrated, experiential , and differentiated , designed to enable students with diverse learning styles to be active learners who make meaning out of the world around them.

15. II. Philosophy: Connections make meaning

16. Our students find meaning in knowledge through in-depth engagement that has value across disciplines and beyond school.

18. How? A curriculum that: Carefully connects skills, content, and learning Is differentiated Is integrated and experiential

19. Skills, content, learning Rigor: students must be challenged by an in-depth process of engagement with content Relevance: engagement needs to be meaningful, building skills and experiences relevant to students and to the world Relationships: the products of learning should reveal the relationships and connections that cross disciplines, communities, and the world

20. Differentiated Awareness of students strengths, learning styles Using our place: community opportunities for place-based education Multi-modal teaching: match the method to the objective and the students Problem-based learning

21. INTEGRATION SHOULD Help students make connections they would not otherwise make Be organic, not artificial or forced on teachers Reinforce connections between disciplines, not put one “on top”

22. INTEGRATION Use the river as a THEMATIC RESOURCE The river journey: discovering places, selves, citizens

23. This provides a framework for the curriculum that uses the concept of place to help students understand not only themselves and their own place, but as they follow their journey, what it means to live in other places (both historical and contemporary) and ultimately what it means to be a citizen, locally, nationally, and globally.

24. Grade level themes: Grade 9: Journey at the River: Our Place, Our Selves, Our Community Grade 10: River Journeys: Many Places, Many Selves, Many Communities Grade 11: Ocean to Ocean: Ourselves, Our Nation Grade 12: Rivers Flow Past Many Shores: Ourselves, Our World

25. INTEGRATION Use the river as a PHYSICAL RESOURCE Multiday immersion experiences by grade level Local community connections: battlefields, paper mill, oyster farming, landfill, water and weather monitoring, water treatment plant . . .

27. INTEGRATION METHODS Grade level teams and themes Discipline connections to themes Content: humanities/ math & science Gl points of conflict Gl immersion experiences Cross-curricular skills Trans-disciplinary units

28. Points of Conflict, 9 – 12: In our selves and in our region, to what extent does change create conflict? Throughout history and geography, to what extent do one community's needs and wants outweigh another's? In the United States, to what extent do the needs and wants of the individual outweigh the needs of the nation? In the world today, to what extent do one community's need and wants outweigh another's?

30. III. Exit skills and content standards: facilitating integration

31. Research and review State standards National councils Partnership for 21 st C skills

32. Cross-curricular exit skills Learning and innovation skills (academic skills) Media and technology skills Personal, community, productivity skills

33. Discipline specific exit skills Constructive skills and content conversations!

34. By defining both cross curricular skills and discipline exit skills, we ensure skills are taught and that there is continuity

35. Each cross-curricular skill has a grade level breakdown Specific skill What it means for students to do this at each grade level

36. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving (9 th grade) What it means for students to: IDENTIFY, CONFRONT, AND SOLVE PROBLEMS Students will identify significant questions that can lead to solutions to a problem on campus Students will compare potential solutions to a problem on campus Students will employ problem solving strategies to solve a problem on campus.

37. Media and Technology Literacy (9 th grade) What it means for students to: Understand and use multiple media and digital technologies appropriately to create products, to work with, analyze, and communicate information, and to work collaboratively.

38. Use the school network effectively (e-mail, website, file server) Understand and use basic productivity applications Begin using different types of digital media creation tools (applications vs. online tools) Create a controlled online presence (private CCS student blogs or social network) Use one digital media creation tool to create a relevant product Learn the responsibilities of an appropriate online presence

39. Each discipline has a grade level breakdown Thematic connection Point of conflict Course Essential questions Discipline skills Broad content parameters

40. In breaking skills down by grade level, we provide opportunities for integration and cooperation

41. Each discipline teacher at each grade level will know what their colleagues need to teach, and what they need to do together

42. IV. Structure: grade level teams

43. GL teams ensure a curriculum: Integrated across the disciplines (content, skills, etc.) With coordinated major assignments and work levels That implements identified skills With coordinated support (learning skills, ESL)

44. Faculty and curriculum grouped 9-10 and 11-12 Independent projects culminate 10 and 12 A two year integrated sequence

45. Some examples of grade level curriculum components

46. 9 th grade curricular connections At each grade level, each discipline articulates broadly how its content connects to the curricular theme Grade 9: Journey at the River: Our Place, Our Selves, Our Community

47. English: Discovering who I am as a reader, who I am as a writer, and “where I live” in literature, as well as a sense of how growth of self may happen in our local place.

48. Science: the universal laws that govern relationships of matter and energy and make possible the existence of life, explored through the forces that shaped our place

49. Math: mathematical patterns in our physical place and our bodies. Those Patterns of change and shape can be represented mathematically using a variety of strategies, tools, and technologies.

50. History: the conflict and blending of three cultures in tidewater Virginia (African, European,Native American)

51. Language: Language as a place specific tool for describing the self and one’s surroundings, and for interacting with others.

52. Each discipline has a grade level breakdown Thematic connection Point of conflict Course Essential questions Discipline skills Broad content parameters

53. 9th grade theme Journey at the River: Our Place, Our Selves Points of conflict In our selves and in our place, to what extent does change create conflict? Math EQs Science EQs English EQs History EQs Math Content & Skills Science Content & Skills English Content & Skills History Content & Skills Thematic connections, trans-disciplinary units, immersion experience, cross-curricular skills

54. English: journal/blogs; reading: change and conflict Math: stats/census data, landplots. GPS, navigation Science: geology, forces, tides, GPS, topography, erosion History colonization and conflict, growth of area, farming, ethnic groups Language: role of language in cultural groups and conflict 3 day immersion trip: The local river: infrastructure and resources PoC: change and conflict in self and place

55. V. Professional Development

56. Hugely important How to ensure that rigor, relevance, and relationships emerge? Authentic intellectual work paradigm by Fred Newmann, et. al. Two year long sets of workshops, on teaching and assessment

57. Time to work together as teams to build content within the framework

58. VI. Accompanying changes

59. Daily schedule 85 minute class periods 9:00 start time In our second year . . .

60. Co-curriculars: Expanded breadth of offerings Choice of pursuit in depth

61. VII. Take-aways . . .

62. Time Planning Transparency and inclusion Communication Training Staffing: “Watershed Coordinator”

63. Issues International languages Art, electives Any classes not directly grouped by grade level Thematic integration harder for math and science classes than for the humanities Physical use of resource easier for science and math