Maximizing Learning Potential: Top 10

Friday, May 22, 2009

Top 10

I was browsing the internet today and came across Suzy Red. Many years ago (has it really been that long?) when I taught public school, I went to her training. She was publishing literature units to follow the Texas Bluebonnet books each year. She had some wonderful activities and did a great job with her units! Anyway, her business has really grown and now she has an entire website full of great units and curriculums. I found a "Top 10 List" that she wrote on reasons to use an integrated curriculum in your classroom. It is geared toward a classroom teacher, but definitely works in our homeschool environment as well! I especially like #'s 1, 4, 6, 7 and 8!

10. Unless you have 50 hours a day to teach, you'll never get it all in.
9. An integrated curriculum allows science and social studies to frame your reading, writing, and math.
8. The brain thrives on connections.
7. Life is not divided into neat little blocks of time called science, math, reading, writing, social studies, and recess.
6. Problem solving skills soar when all of our knowledge and higher level thinking from all curriculum areas are tapped.
5. Real literature in real books provides an authentic diving board into learning all subjects. Award-winning literature provides models for problem solving, peer relationships, character development, and skill building as students are captivated by exciting adventures with realistic characters who go through problems very much like their own or problems (like war)from which they will learn historical truths.
4. School's got it backwards! In real life you are tested with a problem and then must scramble for answers, but in traditional school you are given the answers and asked to... regurgitate them.3. Group interaction and team building inherent in an integrated curriculum depend on using various strengths and skills to create bridges to understanding.
2. Your standardized test scores will hit the top! By inspiring students to think, to love learning, and to put their learning to work in authentic ways, your kids will be equipped for whatever curves they might be thrown...on standardized tests and in life!
1. Students LOVE an integrated curriculum and thrive on its challenges!

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Is it a Cheetah?

When we think of cheetahs we are likely to think first of their speed. It's flashy. It is impressive. It's unique. If a cheetah is confined to a 10 X 12 foot cage, though it may pace or fling itself against the bars in restless frustration, it won't run 70 mph.

IS IT STILL A CHEETAH?

If a cheetah has only 20 mph rabbits to chase for food, it won't run 70 mph while hunting.

A school system that defines giftedness (or talent) as behavior, achievement and performance is as compromised in its ability to recognize its highly gifted students and to give them what they need as a zoo would be to recognize and provide for its cheetahs if it looked only for speed.

However, schools are to extraordinarily intelligent children what zoos are to cheetahs. Many schools provide a 10 x 12 foot cage, giving the unusual mind no room to get up to speed. Many highly gifted children sit in the classroom the way big cats sit in their cages, dull-eyed and silent. Some, unable to resist the urge from inside even though they can't exercise it, pace the bars, snarl and lash out at their keepers, or throw themselves against the bars until they do themselves damage.
In some schools brilliant children are asked to do what they were never designed to do while the attributes that are a natural aspect of unusual mental capacity -- intensity, passion, high energy, independence, moral reasoning, curiosity, humor, unusual interests and insistence on truth and accuracy -- are considered problems that need fixing.

Exerpts from Stephanie S. Tolan ©1996

Work Samples

Manatees (unedited)
By Haley
05/14/09

Manatees are very different than other animals. Manatees are aquatic mammals. They are also endangered. Manatees live in warm waters. They are very slow. Manatees are related to elephants. Manatees never hurt any other animal.

Manatees are funny looking creatures. Manatees are a grey- brown color. They are known as sea cows. A baby manatee weighs about 60 pounds. A grown manatee weighs about 1000 pounds. Sharp propellers from motor boats scar the manatees back.

Manatees have to lots of things after they have a baby. A mother manatee always stays near her calf. Manatees always teach there calf which plants are safe to eat. Manatees usally have one baby at a time every three years. The first thing a baby manatee does after it gets born it rises to the surface to breath. Last, a female manatee becomes an adult when it is five.

Manatees were used in lots of different ways. Its skin was burned as fuel. Also its bones where used as medican and jewelry. Its skin was made into shoes. Manatees fed many people.

Manatees are endangered animals. People need to protect them and not hurt them so they don’t dye out!