1996. MD. 96 - ERICguides, and materials for professional growth, designed primarily for teachers. For more information about the NRRC's research projects and other activities, or

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 398 569 CS 012 590

AUTHOR McWhorter, Patti; And OthersTITLE Student-Generated Curriculum: Lessons from Our

Students. Instructional Resource No. 30, Summer1996.

INSTITUTION National Reading Research Center, Athens, GA.;National Reading Research Center, College Park,MD.

SPONS AGENCY Office of Educational Research and Improvement (ED),Washington, DC.

PUB DATE 96CONTRACT 117A20007NOTE 38p.; For a related document, see CS 012 574.PUB TYPE Reports Descriptive (141) Reports

Research /Technical (143)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS *Classroom Environment; Classroom Research;

*Curriculum Design; English Instruction; HighSchools; Instructional Effectiveness; *StudentCentered Curriculum; *Teacher Role; *Teacher StudentRelationship

IDENTIFIERS Alternative Assessment; Clarke County School DistrictGA

ABSTRACTA team of high-school English teachers at Cedar

Shoals High School in Athens, Georgia, studied student-centeredclassrooms. Through different student-generated projects in theirindividual classrooms, they discovered common principles at workwhich affected the quality of academic experiences, theirrelationships with students, and the implications for future groupsof students in their classrooms. Findings suggest that: (1) theclassroom environment must be conducive to collaboration between theteacher and the students; (2) teachers must be willing to shareresponsibility for learning with the students; (3) a strong emphasison group dynamics, teamwork, and collaboration is essential instudent-centered/student-generated learning experiences; (4) creatinga more interactive learning environment requires more instructionaltime initially; (5) learning how to teach with students at the centerof concern is a gradual process; (6) becoming active learners isdifficult for many students; (7) the size and extent ofstudent-centered learning experiences can vary; (8) learningexperiences developed with one group of students can be shared andmodified with future groups of students; (9)

student-centered/student-generated curriculum allows teachers tohandle heterogeneous groups of students; (10) student-generatedlearning experiences can and should meet required curricularobjectives; (11) an understanding of alternative assessment practicesstrengthens the effectiveness of student-generated/student-centeredlearning experiences; and (12) a commitment to student-generatedlearning experiences does not mean that teachers must orchestrateseveral different projects at one time across several classpreparations. (Contains 13 references and a figure illustrating thecontinuum of classrooms and classroom activities. Appendixes presentevaluation forms and a sample unit of study.) (Author/RS)

Ouummr-gmgmm&-trEm Cum-,E00CDRO Fnow Oum 0-tru

MUCULUM

MENuo

Barbara JarrardU.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Office of Educational Research and ImprovementEDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION

CENTER (ERIC)This document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or organizationoriginating it.Minor changes have been made toimprove reproduction quality.

Points of view or opinions stated in thisdocument do not necessarily representofficial OERI position or policy.

Patti McWhorterwith

Mindi Rhoades Buddy Wiltcher

Beliefs about Students

We \ students are intelligent)artic .ring their own educatioInd th '9Iving students the opportunity to (.._

--mAs their involvement in their education and-614ve and meet persona! -KER 1

/ liDSPtA041

010.

LO

Vollealv,lelo3tter

"Rae:hersof the

NiCaltia

?age 1

\ 5/ C'N&,i-1/44-,_

-...

....

Sae evaluationof Star 'Hare

WO6.,..,.

OrI a scalefrOfn

(VArate the tollowtrig

Werne:

SchoolCameras

page 3

,

`lour overaqenloyffient,

at thearo __-....

lour overallOn In knowledge

---_____

%lourY1OVel

GrOUroverall

ectivotivenees,___

....

lour overallvereollallo?utiettort-

_

om tn.

"Ion.

-.

w

-140TAsare wrl-ticen

Within the liMItsof

lbw Stirl 1.1otee-Pt leas,2.-16

etrles

A2,

5 A 6 X 10.. (50 vrts)

1,11eclassroom.

NRRCNational Reading Research Center

2

mere, solve

Instructional Resource No. 30Summer 1996

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

NRRCNational Reading Research Center

Student-Generated Curriculum:Lessons from Our Students

Patti McWhorter withBarbara JarrardMindi RhoadesBuddy Wiltcher

Cedar Shoals High SchoolAthens, Georgia

INSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCE NO. 30Summer 1996

The work reported herein is a National Reading Research Project of the University of Georgiaand University of Maryland. It was supported under the Educational Research andDevelopment Centers Program (PR/AWARD NO. 117A20007) as administered by the Officeof Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. The findings andopinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the position or policies of the NationalReading Research Center, the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, or the U.S.Department of Education.

3

NRRC NationalReading ResearchCenter

Executive CommitteeDonna E. Alvermann, Co-DirectorUniversity of Georgia

John T. Guthrie, Co-DirectorUniversity of Maryland College Park

James F. Baumann, Associate DirectorUniversity of Georgia

Patricia S. Koskinen, Associate DirectorUniversity of Maryland College Park

Jamie Lynn Metsala, Associate DirectorUniversity of Maryland College Park

Nancy B. Mizelle, Assistant DirectorUniversity of Georgia

Penny OldfatherUniversity of Georgia

John F. O'FlahavanUniversity of Maryland College Park

James V. HoffmanUniversity of Texas at Austin

Cynthia R. HyndUniversity of Georgia

Robert SerpellUniversity of Maryland Baltimore County

Betty ShockleyClarke County School District, Athens, Georgia

Linda DeGroffUniversity of Georgia

Publications Editors

Research Reports and PerspectivesLinda DeGroff, EditorUniversity of Georgia

James V. Hoffman, Associate EditorUniversity of Texas at Austin

Mariam Jean Dreher, Associate EditorUniversity of Maryland College Park

Instructional ResourcesLee Galda, University of GeorgiaResearch HighlightsWilliam G. HollidayUniversity of Maryland College Park

Policy BriefsJames V. HoffmanUniversity of Texas at Austin

VideosShawn M. Glynn, University of Georgia

NRRC StaffBarbara F. Howard, Office ManagerKathy B. Davis, Senior SecretaryUniversity of Georgia

Barbara A. Neitzey, Administrative AssistantValerie Tyra, AccountantUniversity of Maryland College Park

National Advisory BoardPhyllis W. AldrichSaratoga Warren Board of Cooperative EducationalServices, Saratoga Springs, New York

Arthur N. ApplebeeState University of New York, Albany

Ronald S. BrandtAssociation for Supervision and CurriculumDevelopment

Marsha T. DeLainDelaware Department of Public Instruction

Carl A. GrantUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison

Barbara McCombsMid-Continent Regional Educational Laboratory (MCREL)

Luis C. MollUniversity of Arizona

Carol M. SantaSchool District No. 5Kalispell, Montana

Anne P. SweetOffice of Educational Research and Improvement,U.S. Department of Education

Louise Cherry WilkinsonRutgers University

Peter WinogradUniversity of Kentucky

Production EditorKatherine P. HutchisonUniversity of Georgia

Dissemination CoordinatorJordana E. RichUniversity of Georgia

Text FormatterAngela R. WilsonUniversity of Georgia

NRRC - University of Georgia318 AderholdUniversity of GeorgiaAthens, Georgia 30602-7125(706) 542-3674 Fax: (706) 542-3678INTERNET: [email protected]

NRRC - University of Maryland College Park3216 J. M. Patterson BuildingUniversity of MarylandCollege Park, Maryland 20742(301) 405-8035 Fax: (301) 314-9625INTERNET: [email protected]

About the National Reading Research Center

The National Reading Research Center (NRRC) isfunded by the Office of Educational Research andImprovement of the U.S. Department of Education toconduct research on reading and reading instruction.The NRRC is operated by a consortium of the Univer-sity of Georgia and the University of Maryland CollegePark in collaboration with researchers at several institu-tions nationwide.

The NRRC's mission is to discover and documentthose conditions in homes, schools, and communitiesthat encourage children to become skilled, enthusiastic,lifelong readers. NRRC researchers are committed toadvancing the development of instructional programssensitive to the cognitive, sociocultural, and motiva-tional factors that affect children's success in reading.NRRC researchers from a variety of disciplines conductstudies with teachers and students from widely diversecultural and socioeconomic backgrounds in pre-kinder-garten through grade 12 classrooms. Research projectsdeal with the influence of family and family-schoolinteractions on the development of literacy; the interac-tion of sociocultural factors and motivation to read; theimpact of literature-based reading programs on readingachievement; the effects of reading strategies instructionon comprehension and critical thinking in literature,science, and history; the influence of innovative groupparticipation structures on motivation and learning; thepotential of computer technology to enhance literacy;and the development of methods and standards foralternative literacy assessments.

The NRRC is further committed to the participationof teachers as full partners in its research. A betterunderstanding of how teachers view the development ofliteracy, how they use knowledge from research, andhow they approach change in the classroom is crucial toimproving instruction. To further this understanding,the NRRC conducts school-based research in whichteachers explore their own philosophical and pedagogi-cal orientations and trace their professional growth.

Dissemination is an important feature of NRRCactivities. Information on NRRC research appears inseveral formats. Research Reports communicate theresults of original research or synthesize the findings ofseveral lines of inquiry. They are written primarily forresearchers studying various areas of reading andreading instruction. The Perspective Series presents awide range of publications, from calls for research andcommentary on research and practice to first-personaccounts of experiences in schools. InstructionalResources include curriculum materials, instructionalguides, and materials for professional growth, designedprimarily for teachers.

For more information about the NRRC's researchprojects and other activities, or to have your nameadded to the mailing list, please contact:

Donna E. Alvermann, Co-DirectorNational Reading Research Center318 Aderhold HallUniversity of GeorgiaAthens, GA 30602-7125(706) 542-3674

John T. Guthrie, Co-DirectorNational Reading Research Center3216 J. M. Patterson BuildingUniversity of MarylandCollege Park, MD 20742(301) 405-8035

NRRC Editorial Review Board

Peter AfflerbachUniversity of Maryland College Park

Jane AgeeUniversity of Georgia

JoBeth AllenUniversity of Georgia

Janice F. AlmasiUniversity of Buffalo-SUNY

Patty AndersUniversity of Arizona

Harriette ArringtonUniversity of Kentucky

Marlia BanningUniversity of Utah

Jill BartoliElizabethtown College

Eurydice BauerUniversity of Georgia

Janet BentonBowling Green, Kentucky

Irene BlumPine Springs Elementary School

Falls Church, Virginia

David BloomeAmherst College

John BorkowskiNotre Dame University

Fenice BoydUniversity of Georgia

Karen BromleyBinghamton University

Martha CarrUniversity of Georgia

Suzanne ClewellMontgomery County Public Schools

Rockville, Maryland

Joan ColeyWestern Maryland College

Michelle CommeyrasUniversity of Georgia

Linda CooperShaker Heights City Schools

Shaker Heights, Ohio

Karen CostelloConnecticut Department of Education

Hartford, Connecticut

Jim CunninghamGibsonville, North Carolina

Karin DahlOhio State University

Marcia DelanyWilkes County Public Schools

Washington, Georgia

Lynne Diaz-RicoCalifornia State University-San

Bernardino

Mark DressmanNew Mexico State University

Ann DuffyUniversity of Georgia

Ann Egan-RobertsonAmherst College

Jim FloodSan Diego State University

Dana FoxUniversity of Arizona

Linda GambrellUniversity of Maryland College Park

Mary GrahamMcLean, Virginia

Rachel GrantUniversity of Maryland College Park

Barbara GuzzettiArizona State University

Frances HancockConcordia College of Saint Paul,

Minnesota

Kathleen HeubachUniversity of Georgia

Sally Hudson-RossUniversity of Georgia

Cynthia HyndUniversity of Georgia

Gay IveyUniversity of Georgia

David JardineUniversity of Calgary

Robert JimenezUniversity of Oregon

Michelle KellyUniversity of Utah

James KingUniversity of South Florida

Kate KirbyGwinnett County Public Schools

Lawrenceville, Georgia

Linda LabboUniversity of Georgia

Michael LawUniversity of Georgia

Donald T. LeuSyracuse University

Susan LytleUniversity of Pennsylvania

Bert ManginoLas Vegas, Nevada

Susan MazzoniBaltimore, Maryland

Ann Dacey McCannUniversity of Maryland College Park

Sarah McCartheyUniversity of Texas at Austin

Veda McClainUniversity of Georgia

Lisa McFallsUniversity of Georgia

Randy McGinnisUniversity of Maryland

Mike McKennaGeorgia Southern University

Barbara MichaloveFowler Drive Elementary School

Athens, Georgia

Elizabeth B. MojeUniversity of Utah

Lesley MorrowRutgers University

Bruce MurrayUniversity of Georgia

Susan NeumanTemple University

John O'FlahavanUniversity of Maryland College Park

Marilyn Ohlhausen-McKinneyUniversity of Nevada

Penny OldfatherUniversity of Georgia

Barbara M. PalmerMount Saint Mary's College

Stephen PhelpsBuffalo State College

Mike PickleGeorgia Southern University

Amber T. PrinceBerry College

Gaoyin QianLehman College -CUNY

Tom ReevesUniversity of Georgia

Lenore RinglerNew York University

Mary RoeUniversity of Delaware

Nadeen T. RuizCalifornia State University-

Sacramento

Olivia SarachoUniversity of Maryland College Park

Paula SchwanenflugelUniversity of Georgia

Robert SerpellUniversity of Maryland Baltimore

County

Betty ShockleyFowler Drive Elementary School

Athens, Georgia

Wayne H. SlaterUniversity of Maryland College Park

Margaret SmithLas Vegas, Nevada

Susan SonnenscheinUniversity of Maryland Baltimore

County

7

TEST COPY AVAILABLE

Bernard SpodekUniversity of Illinois

Bettie St. PierreUniversity of Georgia

Steve StahlUniversity of Georgia

Roger StewartUniversity of Wyoming

Anne P. SweetOffice of Educational Research

and Improvement

Louise TomlinsonUniversity, of Georgia

Bruce VanSledrightUniversity of Maryland College Park

Barbara WalkerEastern Montana University-Billings

Louise WaynantPrince George's County Schools

Upper Marlboro, Maryland

Dera WeaverAthens Academy

Athens, Georgia

Jane WestAgnes Scott College

Renee WeisburgElkins Park, Pennsylvania

Allan WigfieldUniversity of Maryland College Park

Shelley WongUniversity of Maryland College Park

Josephine Peyton YoungUniversity of Georgia

Hallic YoppCalifornia State University

About the Authors

Patti McWhorter teaches high school English atCedar Shoals High School in Athens, Georgia,where she serves as chair of the Englishdepartment. Her twenty-two years in classroomteaching have included grades six through college.In addition, she has conducted numerous staffdevelopment courses throughout the state andpresented at professional conferences throughoutthe state andnation.

Barbara H. Jarrard teaches high school Englishand is a doctoral student in the department ofEnglish education at the University of Georgia.She has served twice as chair of her high school'scommittee for improvement, which worked withother school leadership teams to develop thevehicle for teachers to enrich their professionallives through teacher empowerment and shareddecision making. It seemed a natural next step toher to empower students to enrich their learningand life experiences by giving them a voice indecisions that effected their classroom lives. Shewas honored by her school and colleagues, beingnamed a Teacher of Excellence by Foundation ofExcellence and named 1995 Star Teacher by theschool's Star student. She is currently serving ona statewide committee that is developing standardsand reforms for student-teaching programs.

Mindi Rhoades has been teaching English atCedar Shoals high school since 1992. She has aB.A. in English and a master's in English Educa-tion from the University of Georgia. She has alsobeen involved in developing and instituting amodified teacher-education and student-teachingprogram with the University of Georgia's Lan-guage Education Department, serving for the past3 years as a consultant and mentor teacher. As ateacher, Mindi has headed the Writers' Club, beenthe National Honor Society advisor, worked withSADD, and coached softball. Her involvementwith the NRRC has highlighted and complementedher teaching career and classroom research.

Edward A. Wiltcher (Buddy) currently teachesand continuously researches student learning atCedar Shoals High School in Athens, Georgia. Hehas a B.A. in English and French, and an M.Ed.in Curriculum and Instruction with emphasis inEnglish from The University of Southern Missis-sippi, and an Ed.S. in Language Education fromThe University of Georgia. He has co-editedMindscapes, a GCTE children's magazine; servedon Cedar Shoals' Leadership Teams; and helpeddesign a yearlong student-teaching program at TheUniversity of Georgia. He presently serves on theEnglish, Language Arts textbook adoption commit-tee for Cedar Shoals. In his tenth year of teaching,5 years being at Cedar Shoals, Buddy is activelyinvolved in the English department. He has taughta variety of students from the alternative place-ment program to the gifted program and feels thatall students will meet expectations that teachersestablish.

Student-GeneratedCurriculum:

Lessons from Our Students

Patti McWhorter withBarbara JarrardMindi Rhoades

Buddy WiltcherCedar Shoals High School

Athens, Georgia

National Reading Research CenterUniversities of Georgia and Maryland

Instructional Resource No. 30Summer 1996

Abstract. Patti McWhorter, English DepartmentChair at Cedar Shoals High School in Athens,Georgia, along with department colleagues BarbaraJarrard, Mindi Rhoades, and Buddy Wiltcher beganstudying student-centered classrooms during the1993-1994 school year. Through different student-generated projects in their individual classrooms,they discovered common principles at work whichaffected the quality of academic experiences, theirrelationships with students, and the implications forfuture groups of students in their classrooms. Theirfinding are reported here.

It's a typical research meeting at my house.The sub plans are on my desk at school. I'velocked up my killer Dachshund, made a pot ofcoffee, sent my husband and three kids off to

1

work and school respectively, and cleaned upthe den in preparation for Barbara's, Buddy's,and Mindi's arrival. We like to start between8:30 and 9:00 a.m. It feels more relaxed thanour typical 8:00 a.m. school starting time.Buddy brings the bagels.

Over the past couple of years, we developeda simple "research meeting dance" that beginswith a slow waltz around the coffee pot, thebagels, and the work from our last meeting.We move languidly through school gossip,slowly gathering energy for the tango to fol-low. It starts as it always does with their ques-tion to me: "So what are we doing today?"

Patti: I'm really struggling with this introduc-tion thing. We need a hook. We teachour students about "the hook" in theirwriting. Why can't this be easier?

Mindi: How about if we begin it with: "Nakedsex. OK, now that we have your atten-tion. We are actually going to writeabout students and learning."

Barbara: Somehow I'm not sure Betty would letus get away with that.

Buddy: You think we'd be kicked out of theSRC?

We dart back and forth, "cheek-to-cheek,"until we come upon a plan. We've got to cutthis thing, or no one is going to read it. Here'sthe plan. We'll each write a few paragraphsabout our projects, find points to illustrate ourfindings (showing, not telling, as we teach ourstudents), and write that elusive introduction.On to the foxtrot.

The foxtrot portion of our "research dance"is deliberate and measured, though not as slow

2 McWhorter, Jarrard, Rhoades, & Wiltcher

as our earlier waltz, or as disjointed as ourtango. In this portion of our research meeting"program," we are on-task and productive. Wedecide to spend a specific length of time com-pleting our writing assignments, usually nomore than 2 hours, stopping briefly to shareour progress. Mindi works in the kitchen,Buddy and Barbara on the couch in the den. Iam on the computer in the den with the largemanuscript open and waiting. The chorus lineawaits.

We move back together in formation, elatedthat we have actually produced somethingworth sharing and made progress on our obli-gations to the SRC. (The School ResearchConsortium, a primary research strand of theNational Reading Research Center, is a collab-orative of teachers in the Athens, Georgia, areawho began using teacher inquiry as a means tounderstand their own teaching and enhancetheir students' literacy development.) You cansee those high kicks now as we move to the bigfinish. The chorus line moves out of the frontdoor of my house. Radio City Music Hall, herewe come!

Meet Our Research Group

We teach in a twelve-member Englishdepartment in a suburban high school of ap-proximately 1500 students located in the east-ern part of Clarke County, Georgia. Theschool population is highly diverse in terms ofrace, academic ability, and socioeconomiclevels. Approximately 54% of the student

population is African American, 41% is Cau-casian, and 6% is classified as "other," whichincludes a growing Hispanic population. Al-most 32 % of our students are on free or re-duced lunch programs. From middle- toupper-income neighborhoods nearby, housingprojects across town, and a small rural commu-nity a few miles away, our school is an inter-esting and complex melding of students.

The administration of our school encour-ages professional growth and fully supportsinnovation in classroom teaching. A stronglevel of trust for our professionalism asclassroom teachers exists between the adminis-tration and the teachers in our English depart-ment. Alliances with the University of Georgiaare encouraged and celebrated. Joining theNational Reading Research Center's (NRRC)newly formed School Research Consortium(SRC) at the University of Georgia was anatural step for us. It meant that we wouldhave the resource of time and additional mate-rials to support our work together and in ourclassrooms.

Shared Beliefs about Students

In our relationships as colleagues overrecent years, sharing teaching challenges andthe unpredictable events of classroom interac-tion with students, we discovered the bondcreated by our shared perspectives on studentsand learning. We also share similar concernsabout ourselves as teachers. Why, we wonder,do we feel compelled to reinvent ourselves

NATIONAL READING RESEARCH CENTER, INSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCE NO. 30

40

Student-Generated Curriculum 3

each year? Why are we always seeking some-thing different to try with our students?

Our questions are even more interestingwhen we examine the diversity of our age andexperience. Developmentally, we are all indifferent places. In some ways we are typical,in some ways not. Mindi, the newest teacheramong us, although inquisitive and not control-ling by nature, struggles with the concern thatshe may not be teaching the correct content.Buddy, after eight years of teaching, is seekingnew ways to approach instruction. His need fororganization and structure in the classroom isdiametrically opposed to Mindi's, yet theyshare common beliefs about classrooms andstudents. Barbara, a 15-year teaching veteran,came to Cedar Shoals from a more traditionaland structured environment in a previousschool. She is constantly wondering how shemight challenge and involve her gifted studentsin deeper, more meaningful classroom learn-ing. For myself, the journey to rethink andrestructure my own classroom began over 10years ago after 11 years of teaching. Methodsthat formerly felt comfortable seemed "out ofsync" with what I was discussing and experi-encing in graduate school. All of us, thoughindividuals, are bound together by one overrid-ing characteristic: we can never feel satisfiedwith the status quo. We can always see possi-bilities.

In the first weeks of our association with theSRC, we worked together to articulate thefollowing beliefs about students and classroomlearning, which enabled us to focus our indi-

vidual research on the concerns in our specificclassrooms.

We believe that students are intelligentenough to participate in steering their owneducational experiences and that givingstudents the opportunity to do this increasestheir involvement in their education and theirmotivation to achieve and meet personalgoals.

We believe if students are motivated andinvolved in achieving educational goals, thelevel of classroom learning will meet orexceed standard, mandated curriculum re-quirements. Along with the teacher, studentsmust become responsible for their own edu-cation and accountable for the end results.(Snyder, Lieberman, McDonald, & Good-win, 1992; Wigginton, 1985)

We believe the primary role we play asteachers is to help students learn how tolearn and how to take responsibility for theirown learning. Through a student-centeredcurriculum, students develop a stronger senseof ownership and purpose. (Fawcett, 1992;Moffet & Wagner, 1992)

We believe teachers benefit by closer inter-action with and a clearer understanding ofstudents. Confrontations are replaced withconsensus-building. (Atwell, 1991; Chappel,1992)

We believe the community benefits by gainingindependent learners who are able to func-tion in a cooperative environment, solveproblems, and think critically. (Kohn, 1993)


ii


0

Active LearningStudent-Centered ClassroomsStudent-Generated Curriculum

0

Passive LearningTeacher-Centered Classrooms

Teacher-Generated Curriculum

Figure 1. Continuum of classrooms and classroom activities.

Although each of us were at different pointsin terms of our years of experience in theclassroom, the earliest discussions of ourclassrooms, teaching experiences, and frustra-tions led us to the understanding that we sharedsimilar approaches to instruction and a strongbelief in involving students in classroom deci-sion-making. Specifically, we found that wehad all been using project-based instruction toinvolve students more fully in classroom learn-ing.

Sharing and discussing our experiences withprojects helped us to realize that we had nohard evidence to support what we believed wasa valuable and effective instructional approach.We discussed the possibility of giving thestudents more choices, developing these proj-ects with students, rather than for students.This seemed a logical next step for us, givenour penchants for being unable to teach any-thing the same way twice. If we were going totry something different anyway, why not findout if our instincts and inclinations were aseffective as we believed them to be?

In our new roles as classroom researchers,we decided to focus our first efforts on broadquestions framed within the context of student-generated curriculum :

How will students who are given an oppor-tunity to participate in generating their owncurriculum respond?How will involvement in this activity affecttheir motivation to learn?

In the early stages of our research, we feltcompelled to define what we mean by student-generated curriculum. We knew more preciselywhat it is not. It is not a teacher-guided, direct-ed, and evaluated unit, project, or learningexperience created in isolation of a knowledgeof specific students in a specific classroomsetting. It is not packaged sets of worksheets,lessons plans, multiple choices tests usedwithout considering the needs of a particulargroup of students in a specific classroom set-ting. Only in determining what was in opposi-tion to student-generated curriculum could wemore clearly articulate what characteristics itpossesses.


12


As a research group, we visualized class-rooms and classroom activities on a continuumwhich spans from active to passive, parallelingstudent-centered to teacher-centered classrooms,

and student-generated to teacher-generatedcurriculum (see Figure 1). Student-generatedcurriculum, then, was initially our term foractive learning and for student-centered class-rooms (Marzano, 1992). We agreed that ateacher might have a student-centered class-room to varying degrees on the continuum,without having students literally generate eachcurriculum event. We describe and illustrateeach of these in our project descriptions andfindings which follow.

Our early discussions revealed this specificconceptas individual teachers, we were indifferent places on the continuum in terms ofhow we each developed and orchestrated class-room events (Foster, 1993; Gere, Fairbanks,Howes, Roop, & Schaafsma, 1992). Collec-tively, we recognized that the more productiveplace to be on the continuum, in terms ofstudent learning, was in the direction of activelearning, student-centered classrooms. In

retrospect, this diversity strengthened ourinquiry. It caused us to ask and answer difficultquestions about the relationships that exist inclassrooms between and among students andteachers. In our diverse classroom experiences,we struggle (and continue to struggle) withissues that continue to influence our teaching.We also came to understand that teachersreading about our struggles might recognizetheir own varied classroom dilemmas and be

able to improve learning experiences for theirstudents.

Exploring our role in helping studentsparticipate in curriculum planning meant thatwe would be compelled to gather data on ourown actions and behaviors. Our plan books,teaching notes, and individual journals becameimportant sources of data for tracking our ownbehaviors and reactions as well as those of ourstudents. Monitoring student academic, social,and personal growth during the research pro-cess meant learning how to select student worksamples, make anecdotal notes on studentbehaviors and reactions, and track studentachievement through our own assessment andevaluation systems.

Project Descriptions

We lived our research in ways difficult tocommit to words. The nuances of our rela-tionships with our students, the personal delib-erations and decisions about instruction, andthe many conversations we had and continue tohave about our research are beyond the scopeof this publication. What we hope to dothrough the brief project descriptions thatfollow, the discussion of our findings, and theappendices we include is to re-create the con-texts of our discoveries. Practical by nature,we also hope that other teachers may see them-selves in our work and be motivated to attemptsomething new, to take a risk in their ownclassrooms, and to discover the power of


13

McWhorter, Jarrard, Rhoades, & Wiltcher

looking at themselves and their students fromnew perspectives, as we did.

Life in High School: Patti's Turn

My ninth-grade scenario project, which mystudents entitled "Life in High School," grewout of a conversation my students and I werehaving about why so many of them neglectedhomework assignments. The silence was palpa-ble when we opened the discussion, untilJeremiah spoke up and tentatively offered hisown explanation, "We just have so manyclasses and different teachers. It's hard to keepup with everything." Jeremiah's hesitant con-fession propelled us to the heart of the home-work issue. These students were dazed andconfused by the complexities of highschoolthe teachers, the subjects, the rules,the social strata. Not completing homeworkassignments was one symptom of a largerissue.

The result of our class discussion, whichmoved from our original discussion abouthomework to the difficulties of the transitionfrom middle school to high school, was aproject in which students wrote scenarios abouttypical experiences for ninth-grade studentsentering high school for the first time. Thisproject, which the students and I envisioned asa packet of scenarios (written by students) withsuggestions for their use in an eighth-gradeclassroom, was important to the students innew ways. For many of them, the fact that theproject would have a "real" audiencetheirformer eighth-grade teachers and younger

friendsresulted in increased interest andparticipation. In their brief scenarios was thehindsight they experiencedthe wishing awayof mistakes and lost time.

Over the course of a school year, at timesselected by the students and me, we wrote,revised, and edited our scenarios. A smallgroup of students volunteered to contacteighth-grade teachers to let them know whatour project involved and what time frame weanticipated following. The scenarios werepresented to the eighth-grade teachers in ourschool district in a packet with accompanyingsuggestions for their use in May of that schoolyear. The eighth-grade teachers responded withnotes of appreciation and congratulations totheir former students for the effort they hadexpended in completing the project. Sharingthese responses with the students, watchingtheir faces when they received praise for aproject that reached beyond our classroom,was evidence that they felt fulfilled in a newway as students.

As the teacher, my role shifted when weworked on this project. Every aspect of theworkdeadlines, topics for scenarios, grouporganizationwas organized with student inputand class consensus. The real ownership of theideas and the learning, consequently, belongedto the students. We found a place for everyone.Felecia, a senior who needed the class tograduate, but whose writing and reading skillswere extremely deficient, labored to write theintroduction to our scenario packet. Rosa, anHispanic student who knew limited English,worked with Felecia to do this writing. Their


14


timidity, which hampered their interaction withstudents in large groups, disappeared whenthey paired up to create those important para-graphs. I could never hear their soft voiceswhen they worked, but I could see the strengthof their involvement when they sat close to-gether, the work folder between them on thedesk.

In retrospect, I know that the scenarioproject is one activity those ninth-grade stu-dents will remember about our class. Theywere engaged as learners; they were in controlof the curriculum. As their teacher, I assistedthem in meeting the goal they had establishedas a class. I seized opportunities to teach theminformation they needed to know, and I stoodby them and marveled at how even the weakeststudents rose to the occasion and completedthis project.

The Senior Loudspeaker: Mindi's Turn

I was teaching a class of low-achievingseniors. Knowing I wanted to explore ourresearch questions about student involvementand curriculum planning and choices, I beganthe year with interest inventories, past learningexperiences questionnaires, and introductoryletters. When students asked me, "What are wegoing to do this year?" I knew I was ready tostart.

About three weeks into the school year, Icame to class one day with an overhead trans-parency of the state-mandated curriculumrequirements. After I had translated them forthe class and discussed the implications, we

opened the floor to discussion and brainstorm-ing. Finally, Chris, a big football player,suggested, "Why don't we do a newspaper.Let's do one for seniors. We're seniors, andwe need to know what's going on." The"yeah" and "good idea" comments from therest of the class let me know this was the one.We took a vote, and the newspaper won by alandslide.

After deciding on the newspaper project,The Senior Loudspeaker, whose intendedaudience was the entire senior class, studentshad to develop and implement a plan of action,troubleshoot and problem solve, develop con-cepts, write, interview, edit, rewrite, type,produce, and distribute their products to theintended audience. They wrote a successfulgrant proposal to finance the printing andpublication of their issues, learned how tointerview the subjects of their articles, anddiscovered the importance of accuracy inwriting and reporting.

All did not go smoothly, however, especial-ly after the newness and the excitement woreoff. Class members seemed to need a lot ofhelp and direction at times. There was neverenough of me to go around. With every groupdoing something different, I was in constantmotionwriting hall passes, listening while agroup explained what they were doing, clarify-ing directions and procedures. I worried aboutoff-task behavior and wasted time. I wanted thesafety and comfort of tradition and structure.

We .persevered. It just did not seem fair togive up so soon when students were still inter-ested and working, even if it was not as dili-


15


gent and organized and efficient as I mighthave wanted it to be. Four published issueslater, our perseverance paid off. Most of thetime, I could not believe the end results wewere getting. Brief, poorly written articlesevolved into longer, more coherent, publish-able pieces with input from peer reviewers andme.

For me, the implications of this project andresearch are clear. Even at its worst, ourproject together was more meaningful andsuccessful than any I could have "imposed" onthem. I confess that sometimes I lose sight ofthis in my day-to-day struggle to cope withpaperwork or planning or classroom manage-ment of even just trying to survive teaching. Attimes like these, I am often reminded of whatone of my students wrote in her final evalua-tion of our class project, "This was somethingdifferent and much more of a learning experi-ence for me than doing all book work."

Star Wars: Barbara's Turn

My first experience with student-generatedcurriculum came as a result of an activity toprepare my students for writing an essay to enda very traditional unit on Puritan literature. Toprepare my students for examining the charac-ter of John Proctor as a classic hero in TheCrucible by Arthur Miller, I had them watchBill Moyer's (1988) interview with JosephCampbell in a short video segment from theseries, Joseph Campbell and The Power ofMyth. Several times during the video, the stu-dents heard Campbell mention the movie

Star Wars. I heard the undercurrent of whis-pers and then the tentative question came froma student, "Why can't we watch Star Wars?"

After initially responding that we did nothave time, it occurred to me that this was anopportunity for a new direction for this class.I proposed to them that they design a researchunit based on the archetypes represented in thefilm. I gave them some parameters, includinga copy of the Quality Core Curriculum (QCC),Georgia's curriculum objectives, and somesuggested readings and writings. Then I leftthem alone, to discuss what they wanted to do.

They accepted my proposal, and added to ita project I would never have considered do-ingcreating an eight foot muralas a way ofsharing with the rest of the school what theyhad learned. I found the proposal back in myhands with a number of unanswered questionsin my mind: Would the school let us paint amural in the hall? How could we find out?Who had the expertise to paint a mural ifpermission were granted? How were we goingto pay for supplies? Where would the timecome from?

Students accepted the challenge of answer-ing my questions and divided themselves intothree committees: one to write a proposal tothe school; one of artistic students to proposea design for the mural; one to investigate possi-ble funding sources. I accepted their proposal.The problem-solving started; researchingarchetypes and film watching began.

As we shared the knowledge and insightswe gained through our research, reading,writing, discussion, and presentations, my


6


students took on more and more of the respon-sibilities of completing and evaluating theproject. This project shaped the class and theinstructional. methods used for the rest of theyear. The students' responses to being given avoice in what they were to learn and how theywere to learn it demonstrated for me just howpowerful a strategy student-generated curricu-lum can be.

Utopia/Distopia: Buddy's Turn

After I read Plato's Republic and Moore'sUtopia, I began brainstorming ideas aboutteaching a utopian unit. At the time, I did nothave any books on utopias, yet I did have classsets of one distopia (anti-utopia), 1984. I

decided to ask my students to help me plan aunit and to come up with a solution for obtain-ing a class set of novels focused on utopias. Inthe meantime, I received a mini-grant thatallowed me to purchase twenty-five copies ofHer land by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; a femaleutopian novel. The students and I were facedwith another problem: we had enough novelsfor one class, but there were two classes thatwould be studying this unit. After two days ofdeliberating, we decided to split the class inhalf and have one side read 1984 and the otherread Her land. The students allowed me tofinish the rest of the planning with the stipula-tion that the unit be fun, as well as challenging.

When we began reading and discussing thenovels, I was able to teach two novels duringone class period by asking one half of the classto compose discussion questions from the

reading while I was working with the othergroup. After half a class period, I would switchsides for the discussion. Even though one halfof the class was reading a different novel fromthe other, the students cooperated. The "fun"activities I included required the 1984 group to"spy" on an assigned peer in the Her landgroup. The Her land group was required tocreate a utopia based on the individuals in the1984 group.

Students had a pivotal role in developingthis unit, and they also helped me create anevaluation form for it (see Appendix D). Wefocused on the requirements for the unit, theobjectives, and the activities. Students learnedto correlate student objectives to their out-comes, so they knew what was expected ofthem throughout the unit. A student put it bestin his final evaluation of the project when hestated, "This project made me feel good be-cause I was part of the decision-making. Iwasn't just told what to do."

Our Pattern of Project Implementation

A careful examination of each of our proj-ects revealed that with few exceptions, wefollowed a similar pattern of implementation.Beyond the parameters of our projects, we alsodiscovered that we each work in similar waysto build community in our individual class-rooms.

The points which follow are illustrated withthe questions we feel must be answered (for theteacher) and activities that may be done by theteacher and the students in a classroom where


17

10 McWhorter, Jarrard, Rhoades, & Watcher

students will be working with the teachercollaboratively to design curriculum. Onecaution: These can be beginning points, butthey are not a foolproof recipe for success.Only a teacher's careful self-assessment willallow him or her to shape the kind of class-rooms where collaborative teacher/studentcurriculum planning is possible.

1. Create a collaborative classroom ecology.How do the individuals in a particularclassroom work together? Who are mystudents? What are their strengths andweaknesses as learners? Are they readers?Are they writers? What are their attitudesabout classrooms and learning? What kindsof classroom experiences have they had?What do they expect of their teacher? Howdo these individual strengths, weaknesses,experiences, and expectations contribute tothe whole classroom?

Administer surveys and questionnaires.Discuss past experiences with students.Look at writing samples from studentswhich are intended for a variety ofaudiences.Examine their reading habits andbehaviors.

2. Explore curriculum requirements. Whatare the required objectives of the course?What are students required to learn? Whatshould students be able to do when thecourse is completed?

Share course objectives with students.Explain what instructional objectivesmean.Allow them to suggest possible activitiesto discover their interests.Listen for project ideas which mightinvolve students more actively in learn-ing as they share.

3. Brainstorm for project ideas. What arestudents interested in doing? What will mostlikely motivate them?

Persevere even when students are unac-customed to being asked what theywould like to do in a classroom.Convince them by your actions that youare really going to allow them choices ininstruction.

4. Focus on a plan. What will be created?What are our goals? Who is our audience?

Assist students in narrowing choices anddetermining a focus by consensus. (Stu-dents may choose to vote, but a closevote could mean that further discussionis necessary to involve all members ofthe class.)Be attentive to the level of supportamong the students for the idea they arepursuing.

5. Identify problems and needed resources.Will the project incur costs? What are the


18


possible funding sources? Is administrativeor departmental approval necessary? Whatskills are present among the members of theclass?

Involve students in problem-solving.Teach research skills so students learnhow adults in "real world" situationsresearch and prepare to implement aproject.Discover which students are experts inareas like technology, art, and so forth.

6. Teach group skills and roles, leadership,organization. Who will be the group lead-ers? How do groups work most effectively?What are our strengths and weaknesses asgroup members?

Determine the level of experience stu-dents have with group work.Explore the various roles normally as-signed in group projects.Encourage and allow students to tryvarious roles to expand their skills in allareas.Teach students about group dynamics.Determine the types of activity logs ordaily records of their activities needed.Allow students to evaluate themselvesperiodically in order to improve. (Ap-pendices A, B)Provide students with feedback on theirorganization and effectiveness as groupsand group members.

7. Determine other curricular componentsof the course and decide how to addressthese. Will the project satisfy curricularrequirements or are other activities needed?How much time can be spent on this project?

Ask students how to satisfy other curric-ular requirementstextbook activities,independent reading, and so forth. (Ap-pendix C)Establish routines which work for theindividual students in a classroom.

8. Develop assessment criteria. How willstudents be assessed? Who will do the as-sessments? What instruments will be used toassess growth, learning, and progress inspecified areas?

Use grading scales, checkpoints ofindividual and group progress, andrubrics to make learning standard, as-sessment, and evaluation criteria clear.(Appendix D)Allow students to assist in the devel-opment of evaluation criteria.

What We Learned

Across our stories of classroom learningexperiences, we found that all of our initialinstincts and beliefs about students, classrooms,and learning were strengthened, expanded, andmore clearly defined. The diversity of the


19


classroom contexts in which we each chose todo our research allows us now the benefit ofdrawing our insights from multiple contextsand perspectives. Most importantly, whatemerged were more questions and possibilities,more challenges for further exploration.

The following points illustrate the commonfindings which emerged through our discus-sions as a research group, sharing notes andresults from student work samples, lessonplans, and journals. Presenting at local andstate conferences as our work was in progressalso provided an added incentive to critique ourprogress, articulate our beliefs, and show otherteachers what we were learning in the process.

To our original research questions whichfocused on how our students would react to thechanges in instruction . . .

How will students who are given an op-portunity to participate in generatingtheir own curriculum respond?How will involvement in this activityaffect their motivation to learn?

we added questions about our roles asteachers in the process. We learned from andwith our students each day. Our uncertaintiesand missteps frequently provided insights intosome of our conclusions about student learningin our classrooms. We offer the points whichfollow as a deceivingly simple list of our find-ings. With this list and the appendix of materialswe used in developing projects with students,

however, we hope to encourage other class-room teachers to examine their own practiceand more fully involve students in learning.

1. The classroom environment must beconducive to collaboration between theteacher and the students. If teachers want toenact change in their classrooms, they mustfirst focus on developing positive relationships

with students. Coming to know students asindividuals, caring about their individual learn-ing styles, and examining their strengths andweaknesses before planning for instruction wefound to be crucial ingredients prior to devel-oping instructional projects. Each of us admin-istered interest inventories, reading surveys,sample writing assignments, and asked studentsto write personal letters of introduction prior toinitiating our classroom research projects. Weenjoyed conversations with students, getting toknow them outside the classroom, discovering

their interests, and thinking about ways toengage them in learning.

Projects and units must grow out of realstudents' interests and concerns. The ideamight be teacher-initiated, like Buddy's Uto-pia/Distopia project, but student interests mustbe of central importance. The experiencesshould provide the widest range of curricularchoicesreading material, presentation op-tions, and assessment. Buddy's students couldarticulate what they liked and wanted to do ina broad sense, but it was Buddy's responsibil-


20


ity to focus their interests within appropriateunit paratheters.

2. The teacher must be willing to shareresponsibility for learning with the studentsby developing and nurturing a sense ofmutual trust. A high level of trust must existbetween the teacher and the students. Teachersmust trust students to make sound choices,although this trust does not necessarily meanthat teachers expect students always to avoidmistakes in choosing. With choices comeresponsibilities. If our choices as teachers andstudents are not wise ones, then we learn fromthose mistakes and move forward. In reflectingon her anguish over taking this step, Barbarawrote, "My first attempts were halting, thoughthought out, weighed, and worried over. Walk-ing into a class armed with a printed proposalto give a group of high school juniors controlof their class, even for a few weeks, is riskybehavior."

Student input into the design of projectsand/or learning activities must be treated re-spectfully. It is critical, we found, that theteacher use the input, even if compromisesmust be made. Barbara found herself in aproposal and counter-proposal situation spe-cifically when students wanted to paint a muralin a school hallway. Negotiating with thestudents, who originally wanted to paint StarWars characters on the mural, the class reacheda curricular compromise. Students agreed tocreate the mural based on original depictions ofliterary archetypes found in the film, creating

a strong connection between their ideas and therequirements of the course curriculum.

3. A strong emphasis on group dynam-ics, teamwork, and collaboration is essentialin student-centered/student-generated learn-ing experiences. Since each project includedvarying forms of groupwork, our discussionsthroughout the ongoing research revealed anawareness that we must employ all of ourresources and knowledge in this area to createproductive student groups. Although the mem-bers of our research group went into theseprojects with a wide range of knowledge aboutcooperative learning, collaborative classrooms,and group dynamics, we each independentlydiscovered that these were areas of expertisewe used extensively in our interactions withstudents.

Perhaps the most important conclusion wecame to is that group dynamics and interactioncannot be left to chance. Students must behelped to understand their strengths and weak-nesses as members of groups and learn torecognize and correct unproductive habits andbehaviors. In the final phases of Patti's "Lifein High School" scenario project, her studentshad to work primarily in groups. She usedthese weeks as a time to focus on productiveand unproductive group behaviors. Studentsmonitored their own progress as group mem-bers and the progress of their groups througha series of simple evaluation questions. Theyset daily and weekly group goals. Their grow-ing commitment to each other as group mem-


21


bers was reflected in one group's name for it-self "The Get-Along Gang."

Throughout our discussions as teacher-re-searchers, it is clear that each member of ourresearch group made adjustments in this area asthe projects progressed. In the future, we willbe able to proceed with an appreciation forgroup building from the beginning, planningmore deliberately to include group dynamics inthe process.

4. Creating a more interactive learningenvironment, providing students with realinstructional choices and responsibilitiesrequires more instructional time initially, asteachers and students learn to talk aboutlearning, negotiate, and make decisions. Asa research group, we agonized over the timewe were taking in our respective classrooms toinitiate and orchestrate large projects usingstudent input. We were anxious about meetingcurricular standards on a local and state leveland felt pressure to move more rapidly throughcourse content. Asking students questions,inviting their opinions, making decisions wasdifficult, time-consuming, and messy work atbest, particularly in the beginning. Our individ-ual stories detail our experiences with timemanagement, time frames and deadlines, andsustaining long-term activities over longerperiods of time (see Shockley, Michalove, &Allen, in press).

What we had to come to understand is thatthe problem-solving and discussion sessions inwhich students are involved as curriculumdesigners is a form of learning. We are becom-

ing more skillful at helping students exploreoptions and the consequences of their choices.As other classroom teachers have discovered(Nelson & Frederick, 1994), a careful processin which students are involved in discussingand generating curricular options includesthink-alouds, discussions of learning styles andpreferences, consideration of multiple perspec-tives on the topic, and attention to the range ofthinking processes which should be covered,from recall to evaluation, inference, and syn-thesis.

5. Learning how to teach with studentsat the center of concern, how to involve stu-dents in instructional decision-making, andhow to visualize new roles as teachers is agradual process. Any deep and profoundchange in our ways of looking at ourselves asteachers and asking the difficult questionsabout the effectiveness of our instructioncannot take place too quickly. We each ac-knowledged that once we began to question ourdecision-making processes as teachers, webecame more and more dissatisfied with theestablished ways of doing things in our class-room. For example, we reformulated as astudent-centered activity the time-honoredtradition of providing historical background(usually in lecture format or assigned reading)for pieces of literature in order to contextualizethese for students. Students can discover suchbackground for themselves, if the teacher iswilling to re-think and redesign learning activi-ties to include student action and interaction.The primary teacher role must be that offacili-


22


tator and guide during the development andimplementation of student-generated learningexperiences.

This discovery and the acceptance of it iswhat will make each of our classrooms dif-ferent in the future. The increased energylevel, motivation, and personal engagement ofour students in the projects we describe are allqualities we have searched for in various ways.Somehow, once we felt what it was like to"succeed" in inviting students to participatemore fully in the classroom, we never com-pletely went back to more traditional, teacher-directed activities. We continue to find our-selves thinking in terms of options for ourstudentsoptions from which they can chooseor the option to think of something different todo to learn whatever it is we are learning.

6. Becoming active learners is difficultfor many students, particularly those whohave been successful in teacher-centeredclassrooms in the role of passive learners.Ironically, the students who experienced themost difficulty with our different approacheswere those who had found success in the tradi-tional classroom. When we began to changeour roles as teachers and place more responsi-bility on the students, some of our "best" stu-dents felt uncomfortable. Accustomed to excel-ling as individuals, these students felt hamperedby collaboration and group work, concernedthat they were being hindered in some way orthat their grades were harmed by those withwhom they were required to work. "We'reaccustomed to teachers telling us what we need

to know, and you're not doing that," a studentremarked in one of our classes. The gauntletwas thrown down. It was up to us to prove tothese students that they could learn more ifthey became more actively involved in class-room decision making and consequently in thelearning experiences we were developingtogether.

As a research group, we discovered that ittakes approximately a semester of carefullycoordinated experiences, explicit discussion ofprocesses, constant self-assessment and groupassessment, and a high level of perseverance tohelp these students become full participants.(Our courses are designed as yearlong coursesfor students.) They had to be convinced innumerous ways that they were learning andthat their classmates were individuals worthknowing. We each took time to discuss theseimportant concerns with the students. Buildinga sense of community in our classrooms wascrucial to finding success with these types ofstudents. They felt that they had more to losewhen we began to reconfigure our classrooms,and it was up to us as teacher-researchers todiscover this common finding and begin toaddress it in our various projects.

7. The size and extent of student-cen-tered learning experiences can vary. Sincewe are relatively new at orchestrating andmanaging student-centered learning, we dis-covered that the length of our units, projects,and experiences varied. The degree to whichour classrooms became and remained student-centered varied, as well. We could agree,


23


however, that our goal would be to graduallydecrease the time we found ourselves in frontof the class while simultaneously increasing thetime that students spent interacting with eachother. We each had to learn how to change ourrole and let our students assume a greaterdegree of responsibility for their learning,turning them into active learners.

As we made curricular decisions andplanned instructional activities, each of usfound ourselves turning to our students moreand more for even the simplest of decisions.Developing timelines for work and havingstudents make choices in activities were thesimplest ways to involve them.

More complex ways included developinglarge scale projects and having students carryout the goals they set for themselves. Mindi'sstudents virtually took over their classroom.Chris wanted to be the editor of their news-paper and make sure everyone else did theirwork. Students formed groups to carry outvarying responsibilities: talking to the jour-nalism advisor, getting permission from theprincipal for the newspaper, consulting senioradvisors, writing the grant proposal for finan-cial support. While writing the proposal, stu-dents looked to Mindi for answers to theirquestions. In an effort to give students theresponsibility, she became the secretary, re-cording only the ideas the students provided.She typed their grant proposal for "home-work," and students participated in editing theproposal the next day.

8. Learning experiences developed withone group of students can be shared and

modified with future groups of students.Three of the projects we developed were theresult of moments in the classroom when werealized that students were "hooked," intriguedby the possibilities of what we were about todo: the Star Wars project, Senior newspaper,and ninth-grade scenario project. All of theseprojects, because they are of interest to mosthigh school students of one grade or another,could be presented as options to another class.Subsequent groups of students must alwayshave the option to expand or modify theseideas, but they are now tried and tested optionsin our repertoire.

Some caution is in order here, however.Trying to replicate a successful project has itsdrawbacks. First, each group of students isdifferent. Class size and compositions vary.Personalities mix differently from year to year.These are important considerations in makingthe decision to try a favorite project again orfor another teacher to "borrow" one of ourprojects. Buddy learned that a second group ofstudents did not share the same ownership andenthusiasm as his first "utopia/distopia" group.With a second group, he adinitted, he neverthought to ask students if they were interestedin doing the unit, he simply assumed theywould be. The level of interest and enthusiasm,he reported, were not the same as with the firstgroup.

Certainly, many teachers have had the expe-rience of presenting an identical lesson to twosimilar classes. In one, the lesson may soar; inanother, it may crash and burn. The key is toallow students real choices. If Patti shares ideas


24


from a previous class, she has developed thepractice of telling the new students how theprevious group developed the idea. She alsoshares work from previous students as exam-ples for initiating new projects. One of thechoices we must provide students may be not todo the proposed project, but to try somethingcompletely different from a previous class.

9. Student-centered/student-generatedcurriculum allows teachers to handle heter-ogeneous groups of students more successful-ly. The heterogeneity of a particular classmight be manifested in varied academicability, learning styles, work habits, inter-ests, and behaviors. Too often, the traditionalclassroom excludes particular types of learners.Unfortunately, these learners usually becomestatistics as they drop out of school or simplysit and accept failing grades. One of the mostexciting aspects of our projects has been that inalmost all cases, we have witnessed studentswho have traditionally chosen to achieve onlyat a minimal level becoming involved in class-room learning. When we changed the "rules ofthe game" for them in the classroom, theywere able to see the possibility of success. Thisresulted in new levels of involvement for them.Although we cannot claim to have discoveredmiracle cures for low-achieving students, weare encouraged by the potential our projectshad to reach out and involve these students.

Peer response and an authentic audience fortheir work motivated many of our students.One of Barbara's students, a young man shehad taught in previous years, revealed tremen-

dous growth and enthusiasm for the Star Warsprojectan obvious change in behavior fromthe apathy he previously exhibited. The lowachievers in Mindi's classes would often turnin short, unacceptable paragraphs as articlesfor their newspaper. After student feedback,discussion, and editing, their pieces improveddramatically. Buddy noted that one of hisstudents, a gifted artist, suffered from low self-esteem as a writer. In the context of the Uto-pia/Distopia project, this particular studentgained confidence in her own ability as acontributing member of the class. Her writing,formerly weak and uninspiring, revealedgrowth because she was able to write about herpart of the project. One of Patti's ninth-grad-ers, who only sporadically attended schoolbefore she began the Scenario Project, waspresent on the days devoted to the project. Hispeers responded with positive comments on hisevaluations.

As we each worked through our projects,we witnessed students who might have optedout of the classroom activities or been unsuc-cessful by traditional standards who becomevaluable contributors. The artists, who werenot the best writers, contributed to the visualaspects of the projects. The strong writersserved as editors for written products, sup-porting and teaching their less capable peers.Individuals learned to work with all types ofstudents in the group settings. The increasedcommitment for doing the work put each of usas teachers in a better position to provide theinstruction students needed and now wanted inall aspects of language arts.


25


10. Student-generated learning experi-ences can and should meet required curricu-lar objectives. High academic standardsmust be maintained throughout these learn-ing experiences, but these standards must bearticulated and understood by students andtheir teacher. Teachers often find themselvesfeeling like any change in practice may com-promise what they are expected to do to meetmandated requirements. Covering coursecontent, however, does not always mean thatcourse objectives are being met. What ourresearch has taught us is that we can addressnumerous objectives in the types of projectsour research has encompassed. Furthermore,we can address these objectives and teach inmore meaningful contexts, with our students asfull participants in the learning.

Most specifically, we have all come to thepractice of sharing mandated curricular ob-jectives with our students prior to developingprojects or activities in which we want toinvolve them (Wigginton, 1985). We providethem with possible choices and work throughtheir suggestions until we arrive at a consensus.We constantly search for activities in which wecan satisfy more than one objective. For exam-ple, Buddy incorporates writing instruction intoevery project by requiring a final paper inwhich students explain how their work isconnected to the objectives of the unit.

11. An understanding of alternativeassessment practices strengthens the effec-tiveness of student-generated/student-cen-tered learning experiences. The types of

learning activities and projects generated byour students call for unique types of assess-ments. For example, our early discussions as aresearch group included some concern withkeeping students on task as they worked ingroups. We wanted to see the results of thetime we allotted for group work, and each ofus began to develop ways to monitor studentprogress. Group activity logs developed out ofthis concern, as did other forms of gradingscales and checklists. These logs, scales, andchecklists soon became standard practice inother projects.

As we become more experienced at facili-tating student-generated learning experiences,we find that involving the students in develop-ing assessment standards and criteria is essen-tial in maintaining the integrity of our projects.Without these standards, the projects becomeactivities without a sense of purpose.

Involving students in setting standards andin the process of assessing how well an individ-ual or group is meeting those standards takesthe mystery out of academic achievement. Thisdoes not mean, however, that students "grade"each other, especially not without teacherinvolvement. Once the secrecy of "the rightanswer" is removed, the answer belongs toeveryone in the classroom. Students can nolonger blame the teacher for their failure tomeet those standards or learn the subject athand. Teachers and students can become allies,not adversaries, in the learning process.

Using peer response and evaluation in addi-tion to that of the teacher is yet another way toinvolve students in the assessment process. If


26


students are trained to respond appropriately tothe work of their peers, they discover anotheraudience for their work. No longer is the worka private matter between student and teacher.Establishing peer evaluation as a regular part ofclassroom assessment widens the audience forthe student work and increases student owner-ship of that work. The training of peer evalua-tors takes time, but is an essential component.Students must study examples of work inrelation to the standards, grading scales, and/orevaluation criteria. Together with the teacher,they come to understand what excellent work isand are able to respond to the work of theirpeers. The added benefit of peer evaluation isthat students begin to examine their own workwith new eyes, improving in areas previouslyunchanged.

12. A commitment to student-generatedlearning experiences does not mean thatteachers must orchestrate several differentprojects at one time across several classpreparations. The reality of teaching condi-tions in most schools means that teachers facea variety of class preparations in a given schoolday. Organizing projects like those we describeis both energizing and exhausting. Although wecontinue to be committed to student-centeredclassrooms, we recognize the logistical night-mare we could create for ourselves if we wereto try to organize a different project for eachclass.

We recommend starting off slowly with oneclass, one project, one opportunity. Studentsbenefit from this approach, but none would

benefit from a harried, exhausted teacher. Aswe have continued to try new projects anddiscover other moments of opportunity withour classes, we have each grown in our abilityto handle more of these kinds of projects at onetime. We have learned, as we feel other teach-ers can, to select the opportune moment to takeoff in a new direction, to give students a freehand. Their increased engagement provides theadrenaline for us.

Final Thoughts

Simultaneous to our work in the classroom, wehave surveyed a wide range of professionalliterature on the subject of learner-centeredclassrooms. All of the resources we haveconsulted reaffirm our beliefs about studentsand about learning. More convincing than allof the professional literature, however, are ourmeeting notes, which are replete with ourshared experiences. We laughed together,bemoaned the impossibilities of our jobs, gotoff task occasionally, baked cookies, ate lunch-es, set goals, made deadlines, missed dead-lines, and made discoveries about ourselves asteachers.

Looking back and looking ahead, it wouldprobably be neater and cleaner to strike off onour own with our research. Sometimes it isfrustrating to try to pull it all together withsuch a large group. Then we look back at ournotes and think of what we would miss. Mindishared an anecdote from a chorus teacher whosaid to her that the voices in the chorus aredifferent, but they end up blending in a pleas-


27


ing way. We have begun to look at our re-search this way, and since we are members ofthe same English department in the sameschool, the research has influenced our depart-ment's philosophy in powerful ways. Ourcolleagues are interested in and supportive ofour work because we share at departmentmeetings and informally over lunch.

As classroom researchers, we feel a height-ened sense of security in implementing instruc-tional innovations because we are thinkingmore deeply about our practice and document-ing our progress more carefully. Formal andinformal conversations about our classroomsremove the sense of isolation with which manyteachers are faced. Talking about what we aredoing, what we want to try, and how things aregoing in our classrooms is something we neednow. We depend upon the community oflearners we have created in our own depart-ment and are confident that we can continueour growth.

We consider ourselves fortunate to be in aschool where our striving to place students atthe center of instruction is encouraged andcelebrated. If we could market the feeling ofcommunity we have created for ourselves inthis research we would do so. We are com-mitted to the belief that teachers must cometogether and look deeply and introspectivelyinto their classroom practiceeven if only twodecide to begin this important dialogue. Theymust then take the next critical step, the stepthat presented the greatest challenge, but hasgiven us the greatest satisfactionsharing ourdiscoveries with colleagues through writingabout our experiences.

References

Atwell, N. (1991). Side by side. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

Chappel, D. (1992, Fall). The stories we tell: Ac-knowledging emotion in the classroom. ADE Bulle-tin, 20-23.

Fawcett, G. (1992, March). Moving the big desk.Language Arts, 183-185.

Foster, H. (1993). Crossing over: Whole languagefor secondary English teachers. New York:Harcourt Brace.

Gere, A. R., Fairbanks, C., Howes, A., Roop, L., &Schaafsma, D. (1992). Language and reflection:An integrated approach to teaching English. NewYork: Macmillan.

Kohn, A. (1993, September). Choices for children:Why and how to let students decide. Phi Delta Kap-pan, 8-19.

Marzano, R. (1992). A different kind of classroom:Teaching with dimensions of learning. Alexandria,VA: ASCD.

Moffett, J. & Wagner, B. J. (1992). Student-centeredlanguage arts, K-12. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook/Heinemann.

Moyers, B. D. (Interviewer). (1988). Joseph Camp-bell and the power of myth: The hero's adventure[video]. New York: Mystic Fire Video.

Nelson, J. R., & Frederick, L. (1994, February). Canchildren design curriculum? Educational Lead-ership, 71-74.

Shockley, B., Michalove, B., & Allen, J. (in press).Engaging Teachers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Snyder, J., Lieberman, A., McDonald, M. B., &Goodwin, A. L. (1992). Makers of meaning in alearning-centered school: A case study of CentralPark East Elementary School. New York:NCREST.

Wigginton, E. (1985). Sometimes a shining moment.New York, NY: Anchor Press/ Doubleday.


28


Appendix A

Student Self-Evaluation of Groupwork Form


." 29

Groupwork: Summary Report Date(s):

Group Leader/Facilitator: Group Name:

Recorder:

Group Members:

1. Attach a detailed Activity Log. Note members who are absent.

2. List the activities /tasks the group must complete and the deadlines which must be met.Number the activities /tasks in the order in which they must be completed. Include the nameof the group member who completed the activity/task.

Activity/Task Deadline Group Member

Using the following scale, assess the group's performance in the areas listed below:

1 = Poor 2 = Minimal 3 = Average 4 = Good 5 = Excellent

On-task behavior Respect for group members

Respect for other groups Collaboration/cooperation

Listening/following directions One-foot voices

What is the area in which this group needs the most improvement?

What can the group do to improve in this area?

30


Appendix B

Senior Newspaper Evaluation Form


31

Senior Newspaper Evaluation FormName

Week of

Focus:Daily/Weekly WorkArticle Evaluation

Weekly Goal(s) (Negotiated with teacher & initialed):

Mon:

Tues:

Wed:

Thurs:

Fri:

Daily Log: Daily Log: Self- Teacher(To Do) (Completed) Evaluated Evaluated

(1-10)* (1-10)*

Grade for Week:

Did I accomplish my goals? If not, why?

Weekly Self-Grade & Justification (%):

Teacher Grade & Justification (%):

*140: Higher number indicates degree of on-task behavior and effort for the class period.

32


Appendix C

Star Wars Proposal


33

Star Wars Proposal

1. Using the QCC objectives, write rationale for watching "Star Wars."

2. Research archetypes (see Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell among others) and use your researchin a paper about one of the characters from the film based on an archetypal pattern. UseMLA style book as reference on style and documentation.Some archetypes you might investigate include the following:

Jung's shadow, Anima, and Persona.The hero archetypesthe quest, the initiation, the scapegoat.Female archetypesthe great mother,the good mother, the terrible mother,the soul mateThe wise old manThe serpentColorsred, green, blue, black, white, purpleThe circleWaterImmortality

****Due

3. Read the following short stories and devise a project/demonstration based on one or moreof the following stories and your research about archetypes.

"The Masque of the Red Death""The Fall of the House of Usher" Poe"The Devil and Tom Walker" or"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" Irving"A Jury of Her Peers" Glaspell"The Murder" Steinbeck"Pale Horse, Pale Rider" Porter"Forcing the End" Nessenson"The Use of Force" Williams"The Circular Ruin" Borgesand 4 short stories of your choice

Devise a way to share your knowledge of, thoughts about, and experience with thestories you do not use in your project.

4. In a small group (4 to 5), choose a modern American novel (your choice) read it, discussit in your group, and analyze it for use of archetypes.

5. Write original work(s) incorporating an archetypal figure, or motif. Genres yourchoice.

34

Criteria for grade:(Parts 2 - 5)Part 2 % Part 4 %Part 3 % Part 5 %Time Line for researchNote CardsFirst draftFinal Draft DueTime Line for reading selectionsPlans for presentations duePresentations due after Christmas????What did I leave out????

I'll negotiate but I will not settle for just good. I WANT GREAT!

Brief Evaluation of Star Wars UnitOn a scale from 1 (low) to 4 (high) rate the following items:

Your overall enjoyment of the unitYour overall gain in knowledgeYour overall personal input/effortYour novel groups, overall effectiveness

1. What did you learn about yourself as an individual learner?2. What did you learn about yourself as a group member? How can you use this knowledge

in outer school situations? How can you use this knowledge in situations outside ofschool?

3. What part of the unit did you enjoy the most (other than watching the film)? Why?4. From what part of the unit did you learn the most? Why?

a. research on archetypesb. reading/discussing short storiesc. group presentationsd. reading/discussing novele. individual original work

5. Briefly summarize what you learned.6. Which (if any) part of the unit would you change? Why would you change that part?

What specific suggestions do you have for making this part (or any other part) of the unitbetter learning experience?

7. If you could, what would you change about your own involvement/effort/response/product/performance? Why?

8. Comment on pacing and time frame to maximize learning experience. What did you needmore time for? less time for?

35


Appendix D

Evaluation Form for Group Utopia/Distopia Unit


36

Evaluation Form for Group Utopia/Distopia Unit

1984 200 Points Total

(50 pts)Daily Journal on the "Big Brothers" in your life 1 2 3 4 5 X 10_At least 12-15 journal entriesJournal entry is appropriate length

and correlates to the assigned novel.

(50 pts)Spy NotesAt least 12-15 entriesNotes are written within the limits of

the classroom.1 2 3 4 5 X 10_

(100 pts)Research ProjectAnnotated Bibliography 1 2 3 4 5 X 10Project was based primarily on research 1 2 3 4 5 X 10_Evidence of research 1 2 3 4 5 X 10_Project was well-thought out and

demonstrated knowledge of Utopia/Distopia1 2 3 4 5 X 10_

Total:

Comments:

Her land 200 Points Total

(50 pts)Daily Journal on the "Perfect" life 1 2 3 4 5 X 10_At least 12-15 journal entriesJournal entry is appropriate length

and correlates to the assigned novel

(50 pts)Group Utopian 1 2 3 4 5 X 10_Utopian CharacteristicsWritten within the limits of

the classroomDescription of roles in the Utopia

(100 pts)Research ProjectAnnotated Bibliography 1 2 3 4 5 X 10_Project was based primarily on research 1 2 3 4 5 X 10_Evidence of research 1 2 3 4 5 X 10_Project was well-thought out and

demonstrated knowledge of Utopia/Distopia1 2 3 4 5 X 10_

Comments:

37

Total:

N iqNationalReading ResearchCenter318 Aderhold, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602.71253216J. M. Patterson Building University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742

BEST COPY AVAILABLE 38

(9/92)

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONOffice of Educational Research and improvement (OERI)

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)

NOTICE

REPRODUCTION BASIS

IC

This document is covered by a signed "Reproduction Release(Blanket)" form (on file within the ERIC system), encompassing allor classes of documents from its source organization and, therefore,does not require a "Specific Document" Release form.

Er This document is Federally-funded, or carries its own permission toreproduce, or is otherwise in the public domain and, therefore, maybe reproduced by ERIC without a signed Reproduction Releaseform (either "Specific Document" or "Blanket").

Documents

1996. MD. 96 - ERICguides, and materials for professional growth, designed primarily for teachers. For more information about the NRRC's research projects and other activities, or