Presentation Type
Presentation
Faculty Mentor’s Full Name
Stephanie Reid
Faculty Mentor’s Department
Department of Teaching and Learning
Abstract / Artist's Statement
The purpose of my research project was to design an interdisciplinary unit around the concept of climate change. Climate change is an essential topic to cover due to its global implications. It has a broad interdisciplinary application which emphasizes the importance of teaching climate change through an interconnected lens. This unit was designed for high school students and integrates the disciplines of Language Arts, Social Studies, Math, and Science. I employed backwards curriculum design methods to construct this unit (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Backwards curriculum design allows teachers to focus their lessons on an explicit end goal and evaluate if students have built the necessary knowledge to meet that end goal. This method of design can be beneficial to any teacher, whether they are designing a daily lesson plan or developing a broad and complex interdisciplinary curriculum unit. One of the constants of teaching is curriculum design, so why not design with the end in mind?
As I engaged in designing the curriculum for this project, I started by developing my Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions. I focused on the specific understandings I wanted students to develop as a result of this unit. I then designed a sequence of formative assessments to check students’ understanding; I also designed a final summative assessment that would evaluate students on the whether they met the learning objectives. Finally, I created twelve lesson plans that provided students with the resources and experiences they needed to complete the summative assessment. These lesson plans involved a text set and multimedia resources. The significance of this work is that it provides an example of how to scaffold students’ interdisciplinary knowledge regarding a critical issue. High school teachers could implement this unit plan immediately.
Category
Social Sciences
Backwards Curriculum Design Presentation
Curriculum Design with the End in Mind: Creating an Interdisciplinary Unit on Climate Change
The purpose of my research project was to design an interdisciplinary unit around the concept of climate change. Climate change is an essential topic to cover due to its global implications. It has a broad interdisciplinary application which emphasizes the importance of teaching climate change through an interconnected lens. This unit was designed for high school students and integrates the disciplines of Language Arts, Social Studies, Math, and Science. I employed backwards curriculum design methods to construct this unit (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Backwards curriculum design allows teachers to focus their lessons on an explicit end goal and evaluate if students have built the necessary knowledge to meet that end goal. This method of design can be beneficial to any teacher, whether they are designing a daily lesson plan or developing a broad and complex interdisciplinary curriculum unit. One of the constants of teaching is curriculum design, so why not design with the end in mind?
As I engaged in designing the curriculum for this project, I started by developing my Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions. I focused on the specific understandings I wanted students to develop as a result of this unit. I then designed a sequence of formative assessments to check students’ understanding; I also designed a final summative assessment that would evaluate students on the whether they met the learning objectives. Finally, I created twelve lesson plans that provided students with the resources and experiences they needed to complete the summative assessment. These lesson plans involved a text set and multimedia resources. The significance of this work is that it provides an example of how to scaffold students’ interdisciplinary knowledge regarding a critical issue. High school teachers could implement this unit plan immediately.