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Creating Standards-Based Integrated Curriculum
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Creating Standards-Based Integrated Curriculum
The Common Core State Standards Edition

Third Edition


May 2012 | 232 pages | Corwin

Translate the new standards into meaningful curriculum!

The Common Core State Standards offer a shared language that ensures consistency and accountability, while also giving you the flexibility to design a curriculum that's right for your students. Of course, knowing what you need to teach doesn't tell you how to teach it—and that's where curriculum integration expert Susan M. Drake comes in.

In this new edition of her classic text, Drake applies the essential principles of standards-based curriculum, instruction, and assessment to today's unique challenges. Focusing on multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches, she provides guidance on

  • Unpacking the Common Core State Standards
  • Planning assessment tasks
  • Designing instructional strategies
  • Developing daily activities
  • Helping students connect essential questions to enduring understandings

Included are new examples of exemplary programs, discussion questions, a sample completed interdisciplinary curriculum, and activity suggestions for building your own standards-based integrated curriculum. This proven resource is the road map teachers and curriculum developers need to navigate the unfamiliar territory of the CCSS and to develop a curriculum that helps their students thrive. 


 
List of Figures
 
Preface
 
Acknowledgments
 
About the Author
 
Introduction: Personally Seeking Rigor and Relevance
 
1. What Is Interdisciplinary Curriculum?
Why Integrate the Curriculum?

 
Approaches to Integration

 
Degrees of Integration

 
A Summary of the Different Approaches to Integration

 
Discussion Questions and Suggested Activities

 
 
2. Accountability and Two-Dimensional Thinking
What Is Accountability?

 
What Is a Standards-Based Approach?

 
Two-Dimensional Thinking

 
The Know/Do/Be Umbrella

 
Designing Down

 
Designing Down and Interdisciplinary Work

 
Unpacking the Standards

 
Curriculum Mapping

 
Benefits of Curriculum Mapping

 
Discussion Questions and Suggested Activities

 
 
3. Snapshots of Exemplary Integrated Programs
Scofield Magnet Middle School, Stamford, Connecticut: The Stamford HP Catalyst Project

 
Shelburne Community School, Shelburne, Vermont: The Alpha Program

 
Miami Country Day School, Miami, Florida: Abess Center for Environmental Studies

 
iEARN (International Education and Resource Network

 
High Tech High, San Diego, California

 
Science Leadership Academy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

 
Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, Detroit, Michigan

 
Discussion Questions and Suggested Activities

 
 
4. Doing the Groundwork for Interdisciplinary Curriculum
What Is Worth Knowing?

 
What Is Worth Doing?

 
How Do We Want Our Students to Be?

 
The Scan and Cluster: Using the Zoom Lens to Identify the KDB

 
Creating the KDB Umbrella

 
Finding the Know

 
Finding the Do

 
Discovering the Be

 
Creating an Exploratory Web

 
Creating Essential Questions to Guide Curriculum Planning

 
Creating Essential Questions Across the Curriculum

 
Discussion Questions and Suggested Activities

 
 
5. How Do Teachers Know When Students Have Met Expectations?
Interdisciplinary Assessment

 
A Sample of a Rich Culminating Assessment Task

 
Planning Rich Culminating Assessment Tasks

 
Assessing the Development of Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings: An Example From a Fifth-Grade Unit

 
Planning for the Rich Culminating Assessment Task: An Example From a Fourth-Grade Unit

 
Discussion Question and Suggested Activities

 
 
6. Putting the Pieces Together
Designing Daily Activities and Assessments

 
Creating the Daily Activities/Assessments

 
The Seamless Integration of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment

 
Discussion Questions and Suggested Activities

 
 
Epilogue: Curriculum Integration in the 21st Century
 
Appendix A. A Completed Unit: Conservation Clubhouse by Cathy Griffin
 
Appendix B. A Standards-Based Grade 10 Curriculum Unit: Saga of Survival
 
Appendix C. A Rubric and Reflection Tool to Use as a Guide for Creating Your Own Standards-Based Interdisciplinary Curriculum
 
References
 
Index

"This book offers a fine text that applies the basics of standards-based curriculum and instruction to different approaches to implementation."

Midwest Book Review, October 2012

Very useful text

Dr Janet Baker
Graduate Nursing, Ursuline College
March 27, 2014

Did not address the needed topics for the course.

Margaret Ferrara
Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, University Of Nevada-Reno
January 20, 2014

Love it! Looking forward to using it
TODAY!

Dr Eric Bull
General Educ Academics Dept, William Jessup University
August 29, 2013

changed from illinois standards to current common core standards

Professor Michelle Walthers
Education Division, Olivet Nazarene University
November 13, 2012
Key features
  • Provides a new approach to standards-based curriculum, instruction, and assessment
  • Utilizes a framework that allows for multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches to curriculum integration
  • Covers planning assessment tasks, designing instructional strategies, developing daily activities, and connecting big questions to big understandings
  • Includes end-of-chapter discussion questions and suggested activities to piece together a complete standards-based curriculum