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the verge approach to curriculum design
Align your practice with your values - walk the talk.
Align your practice with your values - walk the talk.
Verge provides customized training or consultation to help schools operate with integrity, truly doing what they say they do.
Who doesn’t love a good framework? There are many out there to choose from. Your school’s logic model, your district’s published curriculum, or the textbooks you are using probably have a set of goals and some broad guidance in how to get to those goals.
What if you could pause and be sure you're asking the right questions? What if you could be sure that the learning experiences were designed so that every learner could succeed? What if you felt complete agreement with and enthusiasm for the learning goals in your curriculum?
The Verge approach, based on over 25 years of teaching, learning, failing, and revising, melds and adapts some familiar methods (including Human-Centered Design, Understanding by Design, and Universal Design for Learning) to design or refine curriculum. Using this approach, your department or school will: Know you’re asking the right questions. Curriculum changes often come as responses or reactions to a perceived deficit, without deep work to identify what the challenges have been. We will begin with a human-centered design approach to uncover what truly needs improvement.Believe in the learning goals. You’ve got standards and benchmarks already, but your learning goals must be relational, contextual, and authentic. We will work together to identify what you want students to learn, and then think creatively about the evidence of that learning and instruction.Meet students where they are. There’s no joy in designing a curriculum that will only work for a small fraction of your students. As we plan learning experiences and instruction, we will also identify and work to mitigate barriers and to make learning experiences relevant.
Throughout the process, we will use an iterative approach to test and revise our plans. Sessions will be full of warm, authentic feedback; rehearsal and play; and concrete take-aways.
The Verge approach, based on over 25 years of teaching, learning, failing, and revising, melds and adapts some familiar methods (including Human-Centered Design, Understanding by Design, and Universal Design for Learning) to design or refine curriculum. Using this approach, your department or school will: Know you’re asking the right questions. Curriculum changes often come as responses or reactions to a perceived deficit, without deep work to identify what the challenges have been. We will begin with a human-centered design approach to uncover what truly needs improvement.Believe in the learning goals. You’ve got standards and benchmarks already, but your learning goals must be relational, contextual, and authentic. We will work together to identify what you want students to learn, and then think creatively about the evidence of that learning and instruction.Meet students where they are. There’s no joy in designing a curriculum that will only work for a small fraction of your students. As we plan learning experiences and instruction, we will also identify and work to mitigate barriers and to make learning experiences relevant.
Throughout the process, we will use an iterative approach to test and revise our plans. Sessions will be full of warm, authentic feedback; rehearsal and play; and concrete take-aways.
This process is best suited to a department or grade-level team, and can be easily expanded to a full faculty.