The Circle

29 November 2007

I was looking at the CHS plan the other day. Here it is from top down. Each one is designed to inform the one below it.

1. District Goals
2. CHS Mission and Graduation Expectations
3. K-12 Curriculum Guides
4. Programs--The Departments at the School
5. Overarching Competencies--the ones that are specific to a subject area or department. Like graphing in science.
6. Courses
7. Course Competencies

As I looked at it for the hundredth time and compared it to books and planning guides and my notes from the past few years I began to think of it differently than I ever had before.

First, I began to realize that in this year of work CHS has literally gone from number 1. right down (or will go) to competencies. Because of the way the year has been organized and because of the pressure from our accrediting body this has been the way we have had to go about it. The thing is--we went about it exactly the right way. Why in the world would you start to think about course competencies before you had thought of the overarching competencies of a subject area? Wouldn't you want to know which competency type things were going to appear in every course? Well we have done the same thing with our whole school. We have identified what we want graduates to look like and are working on seeing how they get there.

Second, I came to see that in designing our process to go over many years what we really are doing is going through the steps from 1-7 and THEN going back to number 1 to revise from the top down again. We will use the data that we have collected this year to inform what we should do, how we should change things to make them better.

Each time I look at it it becomes more clear that we are doing the right thing. How many people believe that? I'm not sure--but I am confident that we are doing the right thing.

Anatomy Teaching Idea

November 2007

Just thinking about a way to teach anatomy without dissecting cats.

The theme of the year is building an organism. Students can build any mammalian organism that they want. A whale, a cat, a monkey, etc. Clearly some organisms will be more difficult because the available literature will be limited. It will change the order of the course from exterior of organisms to the interior but the change will be a logical one.

Overarching themes:
--appreciation of the beauty and functionality of the living mammalian organism
--appreciation of life
--yes it is hard to show appreciation so students will need to demonstrate their change in thinking over the course of the year.

Rules about supplies
--teams of 2 or 3
--same money that would have been spent on cat $30 per student
--cannot spend more than that and must have receipts as part of the project

Units:
1. Bones and Joints
--Big Goal--The skeleton is the support and protection system for organisms.
--Learn bones and joints as units. For example bones of the arm, rib cage, leg, pelvic girdle, vertebrae--how they all fit together. Not in isoloation.
--Build skeleton of organism--4 class days (90s)
2. Circulatory and respiratory
--Big goal--circulatory system moves oxygen to needed parts of the body.
3. Digestion
--Big goal is break down of nutrients for use in the body.
--Build 2. and 3. as part of one building session--2 days (90s)
4. Muscles
--Big goal is movement and how it works in the body.
--Build musculature--4 days (90s)
--Zoo field trip or similar--looking at live organisms. It would be best if it could be a petting zoo or something where students could look close up at organisms.
5. Integumentary
--Big goal is the role of skin in protection
--build skin
6. Microscopic
--Big goal is what is happening at the microscopic level.
--immunity
--histology