Book Talk Blog: Team 1 - Student Oriented Curriculum

I really thought the information from the Student Oriented Curriculum was very useful and provided a lot of different and innovative ideas. I don't know if I would actually want to go along with a integrated unit such as the one described in the book. I would be afraid that what the students should be learning from each class would get too intermingled. I think that it would take a very well structured and collaborative group of teachers to pull off a learning experience such as this one. I liked that the students were offered so much variety through this curriculum, but the variety may allow them to stray away from what they need to be learning as opposed to what is fun and interesting to them. Learning should be fun and interesting but some structure is needed so that learning is not a big mess.

The presentation went really smoothly. The information in the book about how the integrated classes worked was very confusing. I think they did a good job of explaining it to us because it was a very complex and different way to create a unit. I liked how we did a think pair share type of activity. My only critique is that it was a little noisy and hard to hear our instructor in the beginning with others talking. I also really liked the ending activity where we got to respond to a quote that we liked the most pertaining to the book.