Serendipity in Curriculum Design

Serendipity - The faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for. Merriam-Webster Company, 2023.

"Focus on standards blindly. . . and do so with brutal efficiency".

That was one of the 12 easy steps recommended in a blog post by Terrell Heick, Founder and Director of TeachThought.com. I found his excellent post a few years ago, and it is more meaningful than ever - How to Kill Curiosity in 12 Easy Steps.?

As you know, most professional development and curriculum design consultants will tell you to always start with the standards when beginning to develop a PBL unit.

My contention is that you should NOT begin with the standards! They are very important, and we certainly do ensure that they are learned by all students. Notice that I said that the standards are "learned by", not "taught to" the students. In fact, using the 21st Century Schools method for designing and delivering PBL21 will actually have your students learning at higher levels, and a great by-product will be higher test scores! (2)

Why do I say that you should not begin with the standards?. . . The standards are very limiting.

If you begin with the standards you will necessarily miss out on some incredible ideas. And you will forego many excellent opportunities to create rich curricular experiences for your students. By focusing only on the standards as you begin to develop curriculum you are, in effect, putting on a set of blinders. And the result is that you will have stopped short of designing a truly extraordinary learning event!

Think for a moment about what “standards” are – they are the minimum acceptable bar. Is that what we really want to aim for, the minimum? Let’s reach for the sky instead, and in doing so you will discover a much easier way to teach, not just the standards, but beyond. And, it’s a lot more fun for you and the students.

I do not mean to insult teachers here at all. I know how much you are pounded about those test scores, and how stressed you are (and your students as well).

You have been put into an impossible situation; constant pressure to make the students perform, but without the structures and conditions which support authentic learning. There is hope; high-quality project-based learning will eliminate many of your troubles. Students will become motivated, and behavior problems will diminish greatly if not virtually disappear. PBL21 curriculum makes it much easier to teach more standards – painlessly – because you aren't marching through a boring list of facts and skills at breakneck speed.

If students are to learn, then they must understand. The more connections we can make for our students the better they will understand and remember, i.e., learn. We make meaning for students when we design and implement an integrated, interdisciplinary curriculum. PBL21 is the perfect vehicle.

PBL21 also supports the recent emphasis on developing "21st century" skills such as creativity, problem-solving, collaboration, etc.; designed correctly, your projects will automatically incorporate reading and writing skills for fiction and non-fiction. No need for “Non-fiction Fridays!” How ridiculous that is! Talk about a fragmented curriculum! I cannot imagine any subject for which there are not an abundant supply of both fiction and non-fiction resources.

Quality PBL21 curriculum is a way to easily teach beyond the standards, plus a way to make teaching and learning joyful once more.

There is a time to review the standards, to determine exactly which standards will be learned in each unit, and we have processes to ensure that all required standards are learned; but looking at the standards is not the first thing you should do. You already know, in general, what students are to learn in your grade level or course. So begin with selecting a theme and purpose for your quality PBL21 unit.

How does one go about selecting unit themes? Ideas for PBL21 units can come from anywhere –

• An event – Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Oil Spill, a presidential election.
• An issue – Homelessness, the Economy, Civil Rights
• A magazine article or cover – “Stem Cells – How far will we go?”, National Geographic; “America’s Prison Generation”, Newsweek. “America’s Music – from Yankee Doodle to Hip Hop”, U. S. News
• Short story – “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”
• Mass Media - Your idea could be sparked by a television show or commercial, a song, or a film.
• A personal passion or interest (yours or the students’) – one excellent high school PBL unit I heard about was based upon the study of Forensics (student request – the teacher knew nothing about it, but learned with her students); other teachers may be passionate about Shakespeare, or an Environmental Issue
• An object – I once saw a very rigorous, interesting, high-quality interdisciplinary unit created as a result of finding a shoe lodged in a pile of trash in a river!

Serendipity. How does that happen? Notice that not one of the above suggestions was derived from the CCSS or from a textbook. What they represent is curriculum that is Relevant, Rigorous and Real World! That list barely scratches the surface of what is possible.

Research has shown that the main reasons students drop out of school are boredom or finding school irrelevant. We can fix that – easily!

An example of Serendipitous Curriculum Design

The other day I decided to find out what special days take place during the month of May; I wanted to list them in my newsletter. There are several websites that list interesting special days and monthly themes. May is National Barbecue Month, National Bike Month, National Salad Month, and several others. In May we can celebrate Mother Goose Day, Star Wars Day, World Red Cross Day and many more.

As I update this article it is October 1, 2023. Our newsletter, From Autumn Leaves to AI Dreams, includes many ideas for activities, themes and projects for the month of October, ranging from Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, disaster preparedness, to National Chocolate Day and National Taco Day!

One of these sites is Holiday Insights, where I discovered Frog Jumping Day which is celebrated on May 13. I thought that Frog Jumping Day sounded pretty interesting, and in no time at all I had generated all kinds of possibilities and identified numerous, excellent resources for creating a quality project that is Relevant, Real World, and Rigorous.

First of all, I learned that Frog Jumping Day (an annual event since 1928) is based upon Mark Twain’s first short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County".

The story is online, and I found several excellent online study guides as well as a number of audio recordings. It is also a great “read-aloud”, but you will need some practice first in order to master the pronunciation:

"He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'klated to edercate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too."

FIRST, brainstorm your theme – in this example, it is Frog Jumping Day. Brainstorming means that any and all ideas need to be accepted (for the time being). You can work alone, but it is great if a few other people participate in this process.

• Begin by thinking about connections among the disciplines (even if you do not teach math or literature, let the ideas flow); what kinds of activities or projects come to mind?
• What are some possibilities for a culminating event?
• What resources are you aware of that would be excellent to use (either by you or the students)?
• How can you incorporate technologies?
• What can you build into the project that will help students develop 21st-century skills?
• What are some experiences you can plan for the students that help them develop 21st-century literacies?
• Who do you know that has some kind of related expertise?
• What are some possibilities for Big Questions that will guide students through this experience?

Once you have brainstormed you will discover that you have come up with enough ideas for a multi-year project! You will also realize that you are going in an entirely different – and better – direction than what you had in mind when you began! Now, think about how many weeks are available to spend on the project.?I always plan units to last 6 weeks, but you can go shorter or longer.

Finally, look over your brainstorming results and narrow the project back down to where you really want to focus within your time frame.

NOW, let’s take a look at those standards. You will be amazed when you discover that you have addressed anywhere from 50% to 100% of the standards in each discipline!?As you scan the standards you will find a few that you had not considered but that would be a perfect fit – add them to your plan.

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The Basic Process

In another post in this series we will review the process of designing down the unit.

NOTES about PBL21 implementation -

1. Not every discipline is in every project - The goal is not to include every single discipline in every single unit!?Do not force-fit anything. Many PBL themes tend to lean toward either Social Studies or Science, while it is easy to integrate Language Arts, the Arts and Technologies everywhere. Math is probably the most difficult subject to integrate into PBL21 units, although there are excellent examples of PBL projects based upon math!?All you have to do is decide which road to take!

2. Content Courses - Some subjects will still need to be taught as content-specific courses, and you can make connections when possible to the PBL21 unit. You can also incorporate PBL21 into this single course and use the classroom strategies we use in designing units for PBL21.

3. Mini-lessons – these are basic, discreet skills, content knowledge or concepts that are taught by direct instruction within the context of the PBL21 unit. Usually a mini-lesson of 10-15 minutes is sufficient. This is where you are introducing a new skill or concept or reinforcing with extra support as needed. Example mini-lessons include - how to calculate a percentage, what is long division, what are adverbs.

Students can also acquire or strengthen these skills using various apps on their tablet computers or phones; there are many software programs available that will track each student’s competence on these skills, and Kahn Academy also will have lessons the students can access at their convenience. This is personalized learning!

4. Not all day, every day - Project-Based Learning does not mean that all students are involved in projects and hands-on activities all day, every day. A later post will focus on scheduling.

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Frog Jumping Day is May 13

Whenever I begin brainstorming and researching a unit theme I create an online database. I like to use Weebly. You may access my Frog Jumping Day web site which includes:

• A guide to brainstorming a PBL21 unit
• Recommendations on gathering resources for your classroom,
• A Resource Bank – some resources are related to the story, some are related to frogs, while other resources address connecting many disciplines,
• Big Questions which will guide the students through the unit,
• Suggested activities, projects and culminating events,
• Collaborative Global Classroom Project ideas,
• Recommendations for locating outside experts and what they can contribute,
• Multiple examples of how to meaningfully integrate technologies at high levels,
• Service Learning project ideas, and
• Examples of specific connections to many disciplines - from literature and writing to history (Manifest Destiny, westward expansion of the USA, California Gold Rush, and Cowboy Culture, railroads, immigration, etc.) multicultural and historical Fairy Tales, Myths and Folklore, religions, science (biology, environmental science, medical research, and much more

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Big Questions?

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After reviewing the resources listed above, and adding your ideas, you will be able to answer the following questions:

1. Why should we study frogs, anyway?

2. How do I locate the best resources for a powerful unit?

3. What will inspire my students to want to learn about this?

4. What is a good introduction/entry to this unit?

5. What should my unit encompass - which disciplines, which skills, which content?

6. How can I be sure my students will learn the CCSS through this project?

7. What in the world is Frog Jumping Day, and why should we care?

8. How can I make authentic connections to the community?

9. How can I assess student learning?

10. How do I ensure Relevance, Rigor and Real World connections?

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Connections to the Disciplines for Frog Jumping Day

As you move forward in planning your PBL unit you will find many connections to all the disciplines. Here is a small sample:

Language Arts - writing skills and styles, literature, language and history as well as many specific language arts skills such as simile, metaphor, vocabulary, etc. This project could introduce students to the works of Mark Twain as well as other writers of his era; these fictional writings provide insight into the sociohistorical context of the times, which connects to history, cultural studies, geography and more.

Many fairy tales, folk tales, myths and legends include frogs, as well as religions and ancient civilizations. Take a look at the possibilities on this Google search.

Older students could also examine the ongoing controversy, beginning in 1885 and still ongoing, regarding how Mark Twain’s books went from being a classic that all children should read to being banned in many libraries and school districts.11 Cultural Studies and Literature related to the story, and to frogs, are plentiful - from Aesop's Tales to Hans Christian Anderson, the Grimm Brothers and Beatrix Potter, as well as tales from various cultures (and through time).

Environmental Studies - The focus could be scientific as in Biology, or for younger students, the Animal Kingdom. All of these could be integrated in a unit focusing on Environmental Studies - ecosystems and human impact on animals as evidenced, for example, by mutations caused by pollution.

A word of wisdom about Environmental Studies and/or developing Ecoliteracy – for the younger children stay focused on the beauty and wonder of nature. Save the crises for older students. There are all kinds of wonderful things to do with the younger children – from studying the life cycle of a frog to exploring their schoolyard or neighborhood for animals.

Global Competence – This is one of the critical Multiple Literacies for the 21st Century. Global competence is “the capacity and disposition to understand and act on issues of global significance.”

Students should be participating in an active, relevant collaboration with students in other cultures; not just pen pals, but collaborative research, or collaborative creations of products such as an online database with their research findings, a film, . . .

Another very good project is something I did with my fifth graders. We were required to teach the taxonomy of the animal kingdom. I had just started teaching at this school; the other science teacher gave me a packet of old, yellowed, BORING transparencies so that I could lecture and explain every level of the taxonomy, beginning with the amazing amoeba. I said to myself, "I don’t think so!" School and learning are supposed to be exciting and interesting, not torturous and mind-numbing.

So I immediately and feverishly created an interdisciplinary unit called Kingdom Animalia. My trip to the university and the public libraries rendered about 150 books, including myths about animals from every continent. I required the students to read at least three myths, legends or folklore from each continent. That is a powerful way to develop global competencies.

You could do the same with this Frogs Project – frogs are everywhere, in every culture and religion – from ancient cultures to present day popular culture. After reading and discussing all these stories the students can develop a rubric, or criteria, for what makes a good myth, etc. Then ask them to use their rubric to create their own myth, legend or folk tale. Illustrate and publish them!

Possible Projects and Culminating Events?

?1. Build a Frog Pond

2. Conduct a “Save the Frogs” campaign

3. Student Film Festival for the community

4. Service learning project – Create an Audio Library

For details on each of the above projects please go to the Frog PBL21 page.

That’s Serendipity?

Serendipity is defined as luck that takes the form of finding valuable or pleasant things that are not looked for.?

Would I have thought of these possibilities if I simply looked at the standards??No!?

But, after exploring and brainstorming possibilities using Frog Jumping Day as a starting point (or a jumping off place), I can easily see where many standards can be integrated meaningfully!

So don't rule out serendipity - be creative, and don't limit yourself to just the standards. Our students deserve more than that!

In my next post we will look at specific Culminating Events and see how these fully and seamlessly integrate the standards, 21st century skills, multiple literacies, technologies and authentic assessments.?Meanwhile, you can start thinking about a theme for a quality PBL21 unit and begin brainstorming!

Finally, I wanted to share . . .?

My Pensacola Frogs

Just for fun – listen to our Pensacola, Florida Frogs by clicking the image above.

We lived in Pensacola, Florida for three years, very close to the water on Perdido Bay.?Click the image to listen to our recording of what sounded like thousands of frogs! It was VERY LOUD - thunderous -?every evening at dusk.

I am sure there were thousands in the thick woods located between our fence and the bay, since we could see hundreds in the bushes growing next to the patio.?They were very small, not as big as the end of your thumb.??

One particular little creature made a very loud barking sound - at first we thought someone's toy Chihuahua had gotten into the back yard.?For days we would hear the loud barking, go outside looking for a dog and find no dog!?

We finally discovered that it was a tiny frog sitting in the track space above our sliding glass patio door! The space was so small that I could not have put my little finger into it.?Those tiny creatures can make very loud noises!??Sometimes he jumped down onto us as we stood there peering at him!?My 18-month-old grandson got a kick out of how I moved the day that little frog suddenly jumped onto my face!??They’re tiny, they’re loud and they’re fast!

Really, who doesn’t love frogs??

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Bibliography

How to kill learner curiosity in 12 easy steps, by Terry Heick

“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”

Holiday Insights

Frog Jumping Day page

Frogs – Planning the PBL21 Experience

Frog Resources

Recommended Reading for "Green" Teachers!

Anne Shaw is the Founder and Director of 21st Century Schools. You may contact her at [email protected]