I've posted a course project using ISTE standards to explore the question: What makes us uniquely human? It reflects my current thinking on one section of our g.6 Humanities unit: Becoming Human.
As I wrote the unit I thought about how we're teaching Humanities now. This is my 7th year to teach early humans in grade 6, but it's hardly the unit we taught 7 years ago. Why:
- We collaborate as a teaching team of passionate thinkers & learners. We think, we research, we get caught up in learning more about our subject, the kids we teach and the times we teach in. It's a great environment for growth.
- We work in a context of trust and autonomy. Our common understandings, guide us as does our past teaching, but they are a far cry from the kinds of tourniquet-like scripted top-down mandated curricula that are out there.
- We have fantastic digital media readily available to us. We are more than ever linked to recent research trends and findings in social studies. It's typical for a team member to find a great article/podcast/video share it and sparking further discussions and adaptations to what and how we teach. As always, our challenge is to help our students learn from what are often highly complex articles written for an older audience.
- We reflect on, communicate and share our learning through digital media. The publication process pushes us as teachers and students alike to learn, clarify, ask more questions, consolidate and collaborate. Digital tools like googledocs, learning blogs, wikis and forums provide a real way for us to collaborate, publish and learn.
