[LIT] student-designed units (was "book ideas")

[Bill IVEY]

"A list for improving literacy with focus on middle grades."
<lit at literacyworkshop.org> on Monday, November 20, 2006 at 12:19 pm -0500
wrote:
>> My students have organized a unit for December around the theme
>question 
>> "Should we fear or should we discover more about the past, present and 
>> future?" 
>
>Bill could you talk a little more about this process? I often have kids
>help create assessments but never the theme. I am more than ready to
>approach that task!

Hi!

I love to talk about this process! First, I should say that "Soundings" by
Mark Springer, just released during NMSA a few weeks ago, is a must-read
for anyone interested in democratic classroom techniques. Also, anyone in
or near New England, please come to NELMS this March - Chris Kingsbery ( a
good friend from MiddleTalk) and I will be leading a round-table session
on this topic, and we'd love to see you there!

That said, here's how we go about designing units in the Humanities 7
class at SBS. It's not exactly the orthodox way of doing it, but it seems
to be working out okay.

1.  Students come up with questions based on the starters:  "What
questions do you have about the world?" and "What questions do you have
about yourselves?" This is homework, spread over two nights.
2.  I have big sheets of oversized newsprint set out - four of them
labelled "Aesthetics," "Psychology," "World Cultures" and "History" since
those are the four required areas of inquiry I've set. They take magic
markers and write their questions under the appropriate topic, adding
topics and/or supplementary sheets of paper as needed. This year, they
added a "Science" and a "Miscellaneous" category. There are nine students
in the class, and their questions filled at least 16 sheets before we were
finished.
3.  They worked in small groups to group and combine questions within each
topic.
4.  For the first two student-designed units, they voted on which topics
to cover, added extra questions, and came up with theme questions for each
unit:  "Psychology - Who am I and what does it take to be me?" and
"Aesthetics - What is beautiful?"  They chose genres and formats for final
presentations of knowledge (there are a few required genres and associated
formats they have to cover during the course of the year), for example a
compare and contrast essay for Aesthetics. I chose a class novel for each
unit, and a book for morning read-alouds. I also added in items from our
list of required skills to be covered in each unit.
5.  For the remaining five units for which they are responsible, they
worked extra hard on ways to combine groupings of questions within
different topics so that everyone's favourite questions could be covered.
As you know, they've just written a theme question for the next unit.
That's where we currently stand.
6.  Over break, I'm working on choosing class novels and read-alouds for
each unit.
7.  After break, they will write the remaining theme questions and
allocate different genres and formats for the presentations of knowledge
which end each unit. They will also look at the list of required skills
and figure out how to cover them all during the remainder of the year.

There are also three required units:
1.  a decade study (gets the year started while they're planning their
first unit; introduces research skills). The decade is based on a novel
chosen based on a survey I send them over the summer on book preferences.
2.  theatre:  they read plays, and then collaborate to write one which
they will rehearse in Theatre 7 and perform in late May.
3.  poetry:  a short unit during National Poetry Month, including the
LiteracyWorkshop Online Poetry Slam.

Any questions, just ask!

Take care,
Bill Ivey
Stoneleigh-Burnham School