Teaching Rich Curriculum
in the Context of Testing (Grade 4)
Presented by Andrea
Libresco,
Eda Martin and
Diane Provvido
For those of us "fortunate"
to be 4th grade teachers in today's testing frenzied world, we know how difficult it is to provide our students with rich
and engaging activities while following rigid a curriculum and preparing our students for the N.Y.S. assessments. Can we as educators stay true to our ideals of constructivist pedagogy without losing our minds? The answer is an emphatic "yes" if we follow the lead from experts Andrea Libresco, Eda Martin, and Diane
Provvido, the speakers at the recent "Teaching Rich
Curriculum" Workshop.
Even though jokes were
made alluding to changing the title of "teacher" to "tester", Libresco, Martin, and Provvido, made many suggestions to neophyte
educators, such as myself, who might need some assistance, but were reticent to ask:
These teachers challenge
their students to think "BIG". The "Big Idea" cuts across the curriculum by asking,
"If you change one part of a system, how would it affect the rest of the system?" This
"Big Idea" can be explored during Social Studies, Math, Science, and Language Arts.
Don't think of role-playing as a
primary level activity. Utilize role-play activities in all subject areas to
immerse students into a time period, an environment, or a character's perspective/motivating forces. These types of activities encourage students to make connections, inferences, draw conclusions, and perhaps
expand their narrow view of the world around them.
Utilize Essential Questions
over the course of the school year or a unit of study. Essential questions are
open-ended. They are challenging, interesting, and worthy of the student's efforts
to answer them. The experts shared one such question they posed to their 4th
graders: "Did the encounter between the Europeans and the Indians result in progress
for all in New York?"
Libresco, Martin, and
Provvido only had a mere fifty minutes of workshop time, but their ideas have only the learner in the forefront. The experts agree that, "A learner is a learner because she asks questions.
She enjoys moments of wonder and produces ideas." They believe that students
should walk away from 4th grade knowing and living: I notice, I infer, I question,
I research, I learn.
By: Karen Konrad
