Parallel Curriculum Model

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Parallel Curriculum Model

• A plan for moving every child
• toward expertise

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Our Advance Organizer

• Define curriculum
• Review curriculum components
• Define curriculum models
• Overview of PCM goals and purposes
• Definitions, goals, and purposes of each parallel
  
• Illustrations of each parallel
• Decisions and next steps

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The Word Curriculum

• Latin Running course
• Scotland 1603 Carriage way, road
• United States 1906 Course of study
• United States, 1940 Plan for learning (study)

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What is curriculum?

• Curriculum is a design PLAN for learning that
  requires the purposeful and proactive
  organization, sequencing, and management of the
  interactions among the teacher, the students, and
  the content knowledge we want students to
  acquire.

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Some of the components of a comprehensive
curriculum unit

• Content
• Assessment
• Introduction/Closure
• Teaching Strategies
• Learning Activities

• Grouping and Pacing
• Products
• Resources
• Extension Activities
• Differentiation

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Characteristics of Exemplary Curriculum

• Powerful knowledge goals, representative or
  generative topics, and big ideas
• Advance organizers that clarify prior knowledge,
  future activities, and expectations
• Motivating introductory experiences
• Challenging and active learning activities
• Authentic resources and products
• Aligned assessment strategies and growth
  criteria, feedback, debriefing, transfer and
  extension opportunities, interaction, and support
  
• Interest-based applications and extensions
• Modifications that attend to powerful student
  differences

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What is a curriculum model?

• A model is a format for curriculum design
  developed to meet unique needs, contexts, and/or
  purposes. In order to address these goals,
  curriculum developers design, reconfigure, or
  rearrange one or more key curriculum components.

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The Framework Underlying All Curriculum Models
KEY CURRICULUM COMPONENTS
Intro
Content
Modifications
Resources
Extensions
Assessment
Grouping
Teaching
Learning
Products
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Reasons and Rationale for a Curriculum Model
Based on Student Differences

• Why should we differentiate our curriculum?
• What kinds of student differences should we
  address?
• How will we develop or revise curriculum to
  address these differences?
• What should we expect from differentiation?

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Learning is our Business

• We want to ensure and increase student learning
  and achievement.
• Learning begins with attention to students prior
  knowledge, motivation, attention, effort, and
  perception.
• Different learners have different levels of prior
  knowledge, motivations, effort, and learning
  styles.
• If we attend to learner differences we can make
  our curriculum more efficient.
• Efficiency, effectiveness, and planning increases
  the quality of curriculum.

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Differences Among Learners

• Students have different levels of prior knowledge
  and cognitive abilities (Vygotsky/Bloom/Lu/Kulick)
  
• Some students need, prefer, or learn best with a
  logical, sequence of main ideas that explain the
  structure of a topic or discipline
  (Bruner/Taba/Tyler)
• Other students prefer to think in analogies and
  to see relationships among and across ideas
  (Gordon/Sternberg)
• Many students prefer to see how ideas are used in
  the world (Dewey)
• Still others need to see the personal relevance
  of ideas and topics to become motivated to learn
  (Wigginton/Summerhill)

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So, how does PCM provide qualitatively
differentiated curriculum?
Opportunities to learn the core knowledge
(enduring facts, concepts, principles, and
skills) within a discipline
Opportunities to learn about the numerous
relationships and connections that exist across
topics, disciplines, events, time, and cultures
Opportunities to transfer and apply knowledge
and/or use the tools and methods of the scholar,
researcher, and practitioner
Opportunities for students to address or develop
intrapersonal qualities and develop their
affinities within and across disciplines
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What is the Parallel Curriculum Model?

• The Parallel Curriculum Model is a set of four
  interrelated designs that can be used singly, or
  in combination, to create or revise existing
  curriculum units, lessons, or tasks. Each of the
  four parallels offers a unique approach for
  organizing content, teaching, and learning that
  is closely aligned to the special purpose of each
  parallel.

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The Parallel Curriculum Model
CURRICULUM OF CONNECTIONS
CURRICULUM OF PRACTICE
CURRICULUM OF IDENTITY
CORE CURRICULUM
KEY CURRICULUM COMPONENTS
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Why Four Parallels?

• Qualitatively differentiated curriculum isnt
  achieved by doing only one thing or one kind of
  thing.
• Students are different.
• Students have different needs at different times
  in their lives.
• Students styles, talents, interests,
  environments and opportunities are different.
• Students have different levels of expertise.

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The Parallel Curriculum Four Facets of
Qualitatively Differentiated Curriculum

• Core The essential nature of a discipline
• Connections The relationships among knowledge
• Practice The applications of facts, concepts,
  principles, skills, and methods as scholars,
  researchers, developers, or practitioners
• Identity Developing students interests and
  expertise, strengths, values, and character

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The Core CurriculumDefinition

• The Core Curriculum addresses the core concepts,
  principles, and skills of a discipline. It is
  designed to help students understand essential,
  discipline-based content through the use of
  representative topics, inductive teaching, and
  analytic learning activities.

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The Curriculum of Connections Definition

• The Curriculum of Connections builds upon the
  Core Curriculum. It is a plan that includes a
  set of guidelines and procedures to help
  curriculum developers connect overarching
  concepts, principles, and skills within and
  across disciplines, time periods, cultures,
  places, and/or events. This parallel is designed
  to help students understand overarching concepts
  and principles as they relate to new content and
  content areas.

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The Curriculum of Practice Definition

• The Curriculum of Practice is a plan that
  includes a set of guidelines and procedures to
  help students understand, use, generalize, and
  transfer essential knowledge, understandings, and
  skills in a field to authentic questions,
  practices, and problems. This parallel is
  designed to help students function with
  increasing skill and competency as a researcher,
  creator, producer, problem solver, or
  practitioner in a field.

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The Curriculum of Identity Definition

• The Curriculum of Identity is a plan that
  includes a set of guidelines and procedures to
  assist students in reflecting upon the
  relationship between the skills and ideas in a
  discipline and their own lives, personal growth,
  and development. This parallel is designed to
  help students explore and participate in a
  discipline or field as it relates to their own
  interests, goals, and strengths, both now and in
  the future.

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What does Parallel mean?

• Each parallel has components that align with each
  other.
• Parallels can be used singly or in combination.
• Each of the parallels is of equal value and use
  with a variety of students or with an individual
  student at a variety of times.
• The choice to use a particular parallel should be
  strongly related to learners profiles, the
  subject area, content goals, related units,
  lessons, and tasks.

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Ascending Levels of Demand
Ascending levels of intellectual demand is the
process that escalates one or more facets of the
curriculum in order to match a learners profile
and provide appropriate challenge and pacing.
Prior knowledge and opportunities, existing
scheme, and cognitive abilities are major
attributes of a learners profile. Teachers
reconfigure one or more curriculum components in
order to ensure that students are working in
their zone of optimal development.
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Why Provide Ascending Levels of Intellectual
Demand?

• To honor differences among students
• To address varying levels of prior knowledge,
  varying opportunities, and cognitive abilities
• To ensure optimal levels of academic achievement
• To support continuous learning
• To ensure intrinsic motivation
• To provide appropriate levels of challenge

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Ascending Levels of Intellectual Demand Take Into
Consideration Students .

• Cognitive abilities
• Prior knowledge
• Schema
• Opportunities to learn
• Learning rate
• Developmental differences
• Levels of abstraction

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Ascending Levels of Intellectual Demand

• Vary the depth
• Adjust the abstraction
• Change the complexity
• Make contexts and examples more or less novel or
  familiar
• Adjust the pace
• Use more/less advanced materials and text
• Provide more/less scaffolding
• Provide frequent/intermittent feedback
• Provide/let students infer related strategies
• Infer concepts from applications and problem
  solving

• Provide more/fewer examples
• Be more/less explicit/inductive
• Provide simpler/more complex problems and
  applications
• Vary the sophistication level
• Provide lengthier/briefer texts
• Provide more/less text support
• Require more/less independence or collaboration
• Require more/less evidence
• Ask for/provide analogies
• Teach to concepts before/after examples
• Teach principles before/after examples or concepts

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What are the purposes for the
Parallel Curriculum Model?

• Provides teachers with a comprehensive framework
  with which they can design, evaluate, and revise
  existing curriculum
• Improves the quality of the curriculum units,
  lessons, and tasks
• Enhances the alignment among the general, gifted,
  ESOL, and special education curricula
• Increases the authenticity and power of the
  knowledge students acquire and their related
  learning activities
• Offers teachers the flexibility to achieve
  multiple purposes
• Reinforces the need to think deeply about
  learners and content knowledge
• Uses high quality curriculum as a catalyst for
  observing and developing abilities in learners
• Allows flexibility to address varying needs and
  interests of learners

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Ten Unique Things About PCM

• Defines curriculum and curriculum models
• Describes the 10 components of curriculum design
• Unifies various purposes for differentiated
  curriculum
• Identifies specific goals for each parallel
• Describes how curriculum can be used to address
  the affective domain
• Describes specifics for increasing intellectual
  challenge
• Treats all parallels as equal in value
• Supports an inclusive approach to special
  education
• Addresses collaboration between ESE, gifted, and
  general education
• Stresses the development of talent and expertise
  for every learner

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The Core Curriculum

• The Core Curriculum addresses the core concepts,
  principles, and skills of a discipline. It is
  designed to help students understand essential,
  discipline-based content through the use of
  representative topics, inductive teaching, and
  analytic learning activities.

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Core is not..

• Cultural literacy
• Basic skills
• Regular education
• curriculum

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Categories of Knowledge

• Facts A specific detail, verifiable information
• Concepts A general idea or understanding,
  especially a generalized idea of a thing or
  class of things a category or classification
• Principles Fundamental truths, laws, doctrines,
  or rules, that explains the relationship
  between two or more concepts
• Generalizations A generalization is a principle
  or concept that can be applied across topics
  or disciples
• Skills Proficiency, ability, or technique,
  strategy, method or tool
• Attitudes Self-knowledge of appreciations,
  values,and actions related to a topic that are
  affective in nature

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Guiding Questions within the Core Curriculum

• What is the essential content within this
  discipline?
• What are the powerful concepts, principles and
  skills within this discipline?
• Which topics best represent the core content
  discipline?
• Which topics are developmentally appropriate for
  my students?
• How might I help students construct an accurate
  scheme of this discipline?
• Which resources, activities, and products provide
  opportunities for students analytic thinking
  about core knowledge?
• How might I assess student learning?

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The Curriculum of Connections Definition

• The Curriculum of Connections builds upon the
  Core Curriculum. It is a plan that includes a
  set of guidelines and procedures to help
  curriculum developers connect overarching
  concepts, principles, and skills within and
  across disciplines, time periods, cultures,
  places, and/or events. This parallel is designed
  to help students understand overarching concepts
  and principles as they relate to new content and
  content areas.

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• What kind of connections
• are we talking about?
• Connections across time, events, topics,
  disciplines, cultures, and perspectives
• Connections to self, other texts, and other
  people
• Understanding of intra and interdisciplinary
• macroconcepts
• Understanding of intradisciplinary
• generalizations
• Understanding of interdisciplinary themes

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Guiding Questions within the Curriculum of
Connections

• What are the major concepts and principles in
  this discipline?
• Which of these major concepts and principles link
  to numerous topics, people, events, time periods,
  cultures and other disciplines?
• Which topics, events, people, or time periods
  best represent these intra or interdisciplinary
  connections?
• Which topics, events, people, or time periods are
  developmentally appropriate for my students?
• How might I help students construct a more
  comprehensive scheme of this discipline, related
  topics, and other disciplines?
• Which resources, activities, and products provide
  opportunities for students to think
  metaphorically about macroconcepts, principles,
  and generalizations?
• How might I assess student learning?

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The Curriculum of Practice Definition

• The Curriculum of Practice is a plan that
  includes a set of guidelines and procedures to
  help students understand, use, generalize, and
  transfer essential knowledge, understandings, and
  skills in a field to authentic questions,
  practices, and problems. This parallel is
  designed to help students function with
  increasing skill and competency as a researcher,
  creator, producer, problem solver, or
  practitioner in a field.

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What is meant by the Curriculum of Practice?
Real world applications Practitioner Problem
solver Researcher Creator Producer
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Why might we use the Curriculum of Practice?

• Allows students to function as a practitioner, a
  producer, a researcher, a problem solver, or a
  creator in the discipline
• Allows students to assume a leadership role in
  conducting their own research
• Provides a rationale for the persistent student
  question, Why is this so important to learn?
• Provides students with the tools and methods for
  independent learning
• Provide a means for exploring the daily lives of
  professionals in the discipline
• Offers students the opportunity to learn how to
  use and apply the skills of the discipline in
  real world situations
• Supports transfer and application

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Guiding Questions within the Curriculum of
Practice

• What are the common problems, practices, issues,
  needs, and questions within this discipline?
• Who are the practitioners, researchers, problem
  solvers, and contributors within this discipline?
• What are the powerful cognitive, research,
  reference, learning, communication, and
  methodological skills within this discipline?
• What kinds of products, services, research, or
  investigations are typically conducted in this
  discipline?
• Which problems, practices, issues, needs, and
  questions are developmentally appropriate for
  students?
• Which resources, activities, and products provide
  opportunities for students to act like a
  practicing professional within this field?
• How might I assess student learning?

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The Curriculum of Identity Definition

• The Curriculum of Identity is a plan that
  includes a set of guidelines and procedures to
  assist students in reflecting upon the
  relationship between the skills and ideas in a
  discipline and their own lives, personal growth,
  and development. This parallel is designed to
  help students explore and participate in a
  discipline or field as it relates to their own
  interests, goals, and strengths, both now and in
  the future.

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The Identity Parallel

• Emphasizes the role of the individual within a
  content area
• Provides opportunities for self exploration
• Supports an individuals search for affinity,
  affiliation, and knowledge of self
• Offers a sequential plan to address increasing
  levels of interest and commitment to a field

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Guiding Questions within the Curriculum of
Identity

• What are the various interests, abilities, and
  learning preferences of my students?
• Which topics, skills, opportunities, and careers
  are related to my students profiles?
• How might I link my students profiles with the
  content I am required to teach?
• How might I introduce my students to
  professionals, organizations, and role models in
  their areas of interest and strength?
• How might I help my students discover their own
  strengths and affinities?
• How might I identify, measure, and help my
  students reflect upon their growth and progress
  toward self-actualization?
• What is our long-term plan for supporting my
  students self-actualization?
• Which opportunities and activities are
  appropriate for my students at this stage of
  their development ?
• Which resources, activities, and products provide
  opportunities for students self-reflection and
  personal development?

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Where do standards fit in with this picture?

• National and state committees of content experts
• Identified core concepts, principles,
  generalizations, skills, attitudes, and
  applications in various content areas.
• Spiraled the content across grade levels
• SSS are aligned with the Big Ideas

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What is a standard?

• A content standard is a declarative statement
  that identifies the essential knowledge in a
  given subject area that students should attain as
  a result of instruction. Performance standards,
  or benchmarks, specify ascending levels of
  understanding across various grade levels.

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Products




Definition Performances or work samples created
by students that provide evidence of student
learning Purpose To assess student growth,
to provide for student reflection, to monitor
and adjust instruction, to evaluate
students Characteristics Aligned with the
content goals, teaching methods and students
learning needs varied authentic motivating
efficient








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Assessments

Definition Varied tools, techniques, and
criteria teachers use to measure students
acquisition of knowledge Purpose To ascertain
the extent to which students have attained the
knowledge contained within the learning
goal(s), to make decisions about future areas
of emphasis Exemplary Characteristics
Aligned with the learning goal, reliable,
valid, varied, efficient, equitable,
motivating, have a low baseline and a high
ceiling











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Core Assessments

• Assess students prior knowledge with regard to
  the representative topic and core concepts,
  principles, and skills.
• Useful assessment formats include concept maps,
  journal entries, reflections, graphic organizers,
  charts, diagrams, tables, and collages
• Evaluate the extent to which students have
  mastered the core concepts, principles, and
  skills of the discipline(s). Ask for
  definitions, synonyms, examples, classification,
  and explanations.
• Use rubrics to measure student learning over
  time. Measure the quality/depth of conceptual
  understanding and guiding principles.

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The Relationship Between Assessment and Curriculum
Prior KNOWLEDGE
PREASSESSMENT Reveals critical differences among
students. Guides teachers decisions and planning
TEACHING AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES AND FEEDBACK
ON-GOING POST ASSESSMENT
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How might we use a particular parallel?

• Design a unit
• Revise a unit
• Design a lesson
• Revise a lesson
• Design a task
• Revise a task
• Use in the regular classroom
• Use it in the gifted or ESE program
• Use it will all students
• Use it with some students
• Use different parallels with different curriculum
  components
• Use one parallel while another teacher uses
  another parallel
• Use one parallel after another teacher has used a
  different parallel
• Move back and forth between parallels within the
  same unit
• Use a parallel as an extension of a core unit
• Use parallel activities as optional activities
  for some students

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Who might design PCM curriculum?

• Classroom teachers
• Special education teachers
• Vertical teams
• Inclusion teams
• Grade level teams
• Curriculum developers
• Subject area departments

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With whom might I use the PCM?

• Individual students
• Small groups of students
• Entire classes
• Students with specific interests and affinities
• Students who are currently unmotivated by
  traditional curriculum
• Students with advanced levels of prior knowledge
• Students with latent strengths and abilities
• Students with advanced cognitive abilities

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What contextual factors should we consider when
making decisions about the use of PCM?

• What is the present status and quality of our
  curriculum?
• Which content areas are in greatest need of
  improvement?
• What are the varying strengths and needs of our
  students?
• How do we want students to be different as a
  result of our curriculum revision efforts?
• What kind of content learning must we do first?
• What kind of professional learning do we need to
  conduct?
• What information do we have or can we gather
  about our students in order to make decisions
  about the appropriate use of PCM?
• How might we sequence and pace a PCM initiative?

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James Lee in Phi Delta Kappan

• When students engage in challenging and
  authentic learning activities in which purposeful
  intellectual work is connected to the real world
  of problem solving and creative projects and in
  which a critically supportive audience responds
  to work in progress, students motivation and
  commitment to meet high expectations increase
  dramatically.

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THE END