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- All Subjects: Curricula
- Creators: Oliver, Jill
Description
For the past few decades, the education system in the United States has failed many students because of its inability to increase student achievement. While there are many layers to this problem that cannot be solved with one simple solution, a curriculum change that provides students with more engaging and hands on learning opportunities along with teaching them to be advocates for their own education and community betterment offers a great start to the momentum for change. Service-learning is an ideal way to accomplish this because it incorporates civic engagement and community service into lesson plans that directly align with academic standards. Through service-learning, students are given the opportunity to apply their knowledge in direct and hands on ways meanwhile witnessing the difference that they can make in their community with their knowledge and abilities. Service-learning is a type of instruction typically employed in high school or junior high grades because it requires the course content to coincide with a service project of some kind. In this essay, we look into the research behind service-learning as well as several issues within the community that could be addressed with this kind of curriculum. The aim of this research is to adapt the models of service-learning intended for more advanced grades to align with the standards of a first grade curriculum and also consider the critical thinking skills, self-examination abilities, and social awareness of students at this age when making these adaptations. We believe that service-learning can benefit young students just as much, if not more than older students because it can help them to see the value in their education from early on and demonstrates real life uses for what they are learning. The curriculum created from this research is intended for use at schools within low-income communities in order to empower the students to actively fight against the challenges they face that prevent them from succeeding. However, this curriculum can easily be used in any school setting and adapted to various different age levels.
ContributorsBayer, Kendall Rose (Author) / Oliver, Jill (Thesis director) / White-Taylor, Janel (Committee member) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This creative project cites research on the benefits of multi-age education and thematic units to raise awareness and to promote the use of these educational strategies. Research shows that multi-age education can be beneficial to students by allowing students to work at their own pace in each subject. In a multi-age classroom, students are grouped by ability rather than age, which allows all students to excel in areas they are gifted in and to receive additional help in weaker subjects. This setting allows students to collaborate with learners of various ages and abilities, which promotes pro-social behaviors and reinforces learning. While multi-age met its peak in the American education system in the 1980s-1990s, in recent decades, multi-age learning has lost its momentum due to poorly implemented programs and improperly trained teachers (Grant, et al., 1996, p. 31). Through this creative project, a curriculum based on thematic units for a multi-age classroom comprised of 4th-6th grades was actualized. This project provides a basic structure of a daily schedule and various teaching strategies to organize a multi-age classroom. However, the main focus of this project is on the development of one thematic unit to exemplify how a teacher can implement a thematic unit in a multi-age classroom and scaffold the learning effectively depending on each student's level and ability. The unit was centered on the theme of Ancient Greece and Rome, which was implemented into three content areas: social studies, language arts, and science. The ultimate goal of this creative project is to publish the curriculum and make it available to teachers who are interested in implementing a multi-age curriculum in their classrooms. This curriculum will provide them with a model of a classroom structure and a sample unit, paired with research to support the benefits of multi-age and thematic unit approaches.
ContributorsSlater, Sarah Jane (Author) / Ludlow, Carlyn (Thesis director) / Oliver, Jill (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12