A few years back, I was tasked with rewriting an entire semester’s worth of curriculum for three different courses.
No textbooks.
No workbooks.
The only thing I had to work with were the foreign language national standards and the Internet.
The goal was to create as authentic a learning experience as possible for students.
So every resource had to be authentic.
Under guidance of Xavier University professor Dr. Diane Ceo-DiFrancesco, I spent 16 weeks scouring the Internet for videos, songs, blog posts, websites and articles to use the classroom. Every resource had to be purposeful to help meet the standard I was addressing.
No using something just for the sake of using it.
The task was incredibly daunting, but also incredibly valuable.
And every time I got stuck, Dr. Ceo-DiFrancesco would bring me back to this question: “How can your students use this content?”
How do they use numbers? How do they communicate about food and travel? How do they use sports or clubs in everyday life?
The same could be said for any content area:
- How do students use algebra in everyday life?
- How do students use thesis statements to create arguments?
- How do students use democracy to make decisions?
- How do students interact with nature and the environment to better their well-being and future?
When it comes to letter writing, very few students will write a letter to a friend (unfortunately). But most will have to write a letter when applying for a job. Students could write letters to senators to initiate change in the community.
So when teaching letter writing, teach in the context students will most likely use it.
In order to make lessons as practical and meaningful as possible for students, I always start with these three questions:
- How do the students use this content now?
- How could the students use this in their everyday lives?
- How will the students use this in their future lives?
Starting with these three questions and working backward to instruction will help create lessons that are purposeful.
When I was in school, and certainly before, you’d always get that one student who asked, “Why do we have to learn this?”
And the canned response of, “Because I said so,” was good enough.
Not because we liked that response. But we knew it was all we’d get.
It was good enough for my generation, and it was good enough for the generations that came before me.
But it’s not good enough anymore.
If one of those three questions can’t be answered by what we’re teaching, is it really worth teaching? And if it can, let’s communicate that to students and give them purpose in what they’re doing.