SOC blog-Abbie

Although it all came together as you went through the presentation, it was hard to follow along with you at first because there wasn't enough explanation of the book and what its actual purpose was. The diagram on the wiki helped pull it together and clarify the idea of Student Oriented Curriculum -great use of a graphic organizer to pull together the key components.

The team-building activity was a great example, and it really gave me the feel of what is needed to get the students to work together so that the responsibility can effectively move from the teachers to the students. The unit-deciding activity also gave some insight as to how much the students are involved, how much they are in charge of their education.

You had some great resources: Steph's chart is certainly helpful; again, it lays out what is necessary, and how the process works. The clip we watched on "This We Believe -In Action" was great because we can see that these ideas and concepts are really being implemented in the classroom -Dr. Grace should consider showing us more of it because of what our goal is in this course. I'm going to go out and get a copy of Student Oriented Curriculum; it will be a great tool, even if the school I end up at or the team I end up working on doesn't go all out as Lee did, it appears to have some good ideas and resources for integrating students' opinions and needs into a regular curriculum.

It's interesting that this appeared to be specifically useful to students who were on the "cusp of staying and taking directions, or moving on and thinking on their own." It's great that your group pointed this out because that is the point that many middle schoolers are at, and it's important for us as future educators to take note of it.

Overall, great job; it was quite interesting and informative.