Book club recap, part 2
A review of the second half of Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking
Hey there, Bell Ringers! We bring our first book club to a close this week, and it was a great, deep discussion. Thank you to everyone who joined. I’ll definitely be doing this again—feel free to send recommendations for books you’d like to read and talk about on Zoom.
Readers have also expressed some interest in doing a humanities book club, reading some great works of the Western canon. Let me know if this might interest you as I make plans for the fall.
I’m going to dim the lights over here at The Bell Ringer for the next two weeks while I recharge and get ready for the fall. You’ll still get newsletters in your inbox, but I will return with the rest of the Summer of Knowledge, a live Q&A with author and scholar Paul Kirschner, some important new reporting and much more when I return.
Catch up on the Summer of Knowledge:
And coming soon: what knowledge-building looks like in math; how writing can help; how to connect prior knowledge to new learning. Learn more.
Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking, Part 2
In the second half of Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival, by Tim Surma, Claudio Vanhees, Michiel Wils, Jasper Nijlunsing, Nuno Crato, John Hattie, Daniel Muijs, Elizabeth Rata, Dylan Wiliam and Paul A. Kirschner, the authors explore how a strong curriculum, well-implemented, can provide students with the knowledge they need to form connections, think deeply and critically analyze important issues.
The authors emphasize that building knowledge is *not* about learning and regurgitating facts, but about something deeper: forming connections between knowledge strands and then applying them in novel applications. And importantly, curricula don’t teach students on their own—it’s the work of the teacher to implement it in a way that sticks.
“Teachers’ translation of the written curriculum into curricular intentions acts as an important mediating factor in what is eventually taught to and finally learned by students,” the authors wrote.
Our book club discussion centered around what a “knowledge-rich” curriculum looks like on the ground in real classrooms, and exactly what teachers are doing to try to both build knowledge and make deep connections. We get into how systems need to support this work—progressions between grades play a big role in making sure knowledge is sturdily built over time. We even get into what’s appropriate for children to learn at what ages, and how “what you are able to learn depends on what you already know” plays out in classrooms every day. An overall interesting discussion, and you can watch it all here.
Here’s the recording of the meeting, would love to hear your thoughts!