The challenges for us to articulate what we do have not gone away and in the last year we have added many docs to the Primers, etc. They are all great but, as unavoidably happens on this site, like me, they are all over the place. I see Catharina’s elementary course descriptions as one pillar we can begin an updated conversation on how to represent what we do to others. Her course descriptions for elementary classes are in my view revolutionary because they actually describe what she does and how they connect to standards. Who ever heard of such a thing in a course description?
The questions now are:
1. What specifically do we need to hand to people who just want to know what we do to align with standards? Their Scopes and Sequences, because they are tied to thematic units, don’t describe what we do at all, since they are tied to an outmoded model that focuses equally on input and output and semantic sets, etc. etc. Why are we even still using the term Scope and Sequence? Really creative minds like Alisa’s can publish docs that look good, and make people go away, but do we even want Scope and Sequence documents? If not, what do we want? For me that is a HUGE question. I mean, we don’t want them, right? Help me out here.
2. How many of us here in this community are willing to take the time to re-read Robert Harrell’s articles on Scope and Sequences when he himself was challenged by a district administrator in Los Angeles in the same way Melissa was about two years ago? This is a specific challenge. I am going to republish every one of those articles here in the next few days and I invite/request/insist (pick one) that we re-read them right now and discuss them.
3. Where are our middle school and high school templates to go with Catharina’s? We need those now. Sean found a few that Robert wrote (below) and we should look at those and maybe just use them, for high school. The middle school Foundations types of classes need to be written.
4. What other documents can we reference here to grab and print and hand to people who want to know how we address the standards? How do we present ourselves to all those (seems like millions) who now challenge us daily, now that we have a full head of steam going and they need to figure out what that fast train cutting across their turf is all about? What docs do we use? Can we limit them? (Now you can see why we need to re-read Robert’s articles.)
5. In DPS about three years ago under Diana’s guidance we started backwards planning of all the novels, identifying the target vocabulary needed to read them. Those docs became the scope and sequences for many of us to hand in to our administrators. It took a long time – we did that each June in language teams. Those docs, which are available on the DPS website (I think they are – I never used them but I will see Diana later today and ask her) reflected our growing district wide interest in the value and supremely important role of reading novels (over stories) in TPRS. The new DPS docs looked like pacing guides/scope and sequences. Were they? They served their purpose with admins but do we want to describe our fluency programs solely in terms of novels? For awhile I bought into the DPS model but over time started to realize that my kids couldn’t read novels at least early on because they needed more auditory input and stories reign supreme for that, not to mention that the goal of the first two steps of TPRS is to set up the big one, Step 3 reading of stories, so why the focus on all the novels? It didn’t feel right to me and I curtailed and limited my own use of the novels drastically in level one in favor of more stories – all of that is described in Stepping Stones to Stories. Leigh Anne Munoz hands in to her admins the Matava word list, which was the most creative and simple idea for a scope and sequence I have heard of. So the question is do we want to promote in other districts the new DPS model of creating pacing guides based on novels? That’s the little question to the big question, “Can’t we just dump the pacing guides altogether and hand in something else like course descriptions and be done with all the nonsense?” Another way to say that is, “Do we even owe pacing guides/scopes and sequences to people who don’t get what we do?” It makes me think of digging a hole and filling it in to keep people who think digging holes and filling them in with the same dirt has value.
So I am really asking, “Do we have the courage to confront those who use an old model of education to require us to produce documents that don’t work, never did work and never will work? Docs that are sad representations of an old way of looking at language instruction and that really have no value anymore because they tie down what we do and throw it into the memorization corner of the room which is not the part of the room we like to hang out in? Pacing guides are based on textbooks and nobody currently teaching for fluency where Communication is the key to everything (i.e. meeting the ACTFL Standards) uses them anymore. And that’s a lot of people, with new young talented teachers exploring stories every day.
Maybe some in the group will answer some or all of those questions because in my view they need to be answered, especially the big one of getting rid of the guides completely and just coming out and say what we do openly and honestly.
We need ammunition and we need specifics and we need to organize all the docs here and slay the confusion. The Primers hard link is so loaded with good stuff, but it’s exploding with too much information. How do we handle this?
I know, I know, my request is about as clear as mud.