Education

1. Research Your Monster Project

You have two formats to choose for this project. Format one comes from the four bullet points on pages XX-XXIII of the Cruz text. Format two comes from Figure 13-1 Name the Problem on page 132 of the Cruz text. Whichever format you choose, you will need to have 3-5 outside resources to include in your study, which support and clarify the problem you’ve selected and provides a solid research basis for experimenting and/or planning for instruction, (depending upon which format you’ve chosen). Resources should come from peer reviewed journals within the last 5 years and/or texts for teachers of writing or writing professionals. The problem you select may be from the Cruz text or something entirely different. (2-5 pages) 100 pts.

2. Final Curriculum Project

Instead of a final exam, you will tailor a curriculum project to your specific classroom, school setting, or a future setting as a goal in mind. This may be completed with a partner or group, or completed individually. Either way, there will be many opportunities for working on, gathering ideas, and collaborating during our class sessions. We will use Backward Design to map out your project and ideally, utilize the wealth of resources from the Calkins text. The idea is not to reinvent the wheel here, but in consideration of prior experiences and what you’ve studied so far in this course, determine overall learning goals, how those goals will be assessed, sequence of topics, and what activities, lessons, and resources might be used to fill in the gaps.

However, if you are framing the project from a school level leadership position, you may plan for how to align goals and assessments within and across grades levels. If you are a classroom teacher, you may also want to focus on either cross-grade articulation or on creating within grade norms, or you may want to hone in on your individual practice and scope out the year, or plan for a specific genre or unit of study more in-depth. Details will be discussed later in the semester. 100 pts.

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