For Massachuetts SLMSs about Curriculum Frameworks Committees

[JCONSTANT@umassd.edu]

Dear Colleagues,

     If any of you are on the statewide Curriculum Frameworks Committees,
I would really like to hear from you. I sent the following documents to
Mr.Daniel French, Administrator for Instruction and Curriculum Services at
the Massachusetts Department of Education:

     -Suggested Learner Outcomes, GRades k-12; Information Skills, LIbrary
Media (Oklahoma State Department of Instruction.)
     -Sample units which integrate information skills with History,English,
Science, etc. These are excerpts from  Stacks of Ideas,(Oklahoma
State Department of Instruction ) .
     -Information about learning styles
     -Information about thinking skills, from Skylights (Oklahoma State
Department of Education.)
     -Excerpts from Teacher Handbook: Library/MEdia/and Computer Skills
K-12  from North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
     -Information Skills Curriculum Guide, Process, Scope and Sequence,
prepared by the  Washington LIbrary Media Association

Mr. French forwarded them to Linda Beardsley, who, I believe, is in charge
of the Curriculum Frameworks Committees. She replied by email and told me
that the information would be duplicated and distributed to Curriculum
Frameworks Committee members. I have since sent her messages by voice mail
and email asking for a list of people who are on the frameworks committees,
but have not yet received any replies.

     If any of you attended the Curriculum Frameworks meetings on April 5th
and 6th, you probably received these materials. I hope they will be useful
to you. Please let me know if you are serving on any of these committees,
or if you know people who are on the various committees. I'll do my best to
get additional information for them.
                                                  Sincerely,
                                                  Jane Constant
                                                  B.M.C. Durfee High School
                                                  jconstant@umassd.edu





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I've enclosed copies of my letter to Dr. French, and the email reply from
Linda Beardsley.



                                                  March 7, 1994
                                                  B.M.C.Durfee High School




Mr. Daniel French, Administrator
Instruction and Curriculum Services
Massachusetts Department of Education
350 Main Street
Malden, MA  02148-5023


Dear Mr. French:

     Having read the first draft of the Massachusetts Commission on the
Common Core of Learning, I would like to commend the Commission members for
their efforts, and offer a few comments about the following student
outcomes:

 3. Select appropriate procedures, tools, and techniques for learning
16. Apply appropriate technologies to acquire, organize, and communicate
knowledge, information, sounds, and images.
17. Select and use appropriate media to share information and to promote
understanding
19. Conduct research by seeking, selecting, and organizing information from
a variety of sources
21. Analyze, interpret, and evaluate information in a variety of ways using
such tools as diagrams, graphs, tables  and spreadsheets

    In my opinion, these activities should be integrated into the subject
curricula on a  k-12 continuum. I have attached a scope and sequence for
some of them, and sample units in which some of the activities are taught
as part of class research projects in English, Science, Social Science,
etc.

    All of our middle and high schools should have well equipped library
media centers which are staffed by professional school library media
personnel. Teaching to different learning styles requires many different
resources. Since it is not possible to put all of these resources in every
classroom, it makes sense to have them centrally located and accessible to
every teacher and student in a school.

    Flexible scheduling allows teachers and librarians to plan and conduct
curriculum units in which students learn how to effectively locate,
analyze, and use various information sources to solve problems. This
includes in house as well as electronic and online information resources.
    Unfortunately, this is not being done adequately in all of our schools.
Since school libraries came under the jurisdiction of the Department of
Education about twelve years ago, there has been no one at the Department
of Education to oversee school libraries or to advocate for strong school
library media programs.

    I hope that you will find the information I have attached useful. I can
send you more examples in other subject areas, if you wish. The Oklahoma
State Department of Education has published a number of useful curriculum
guides, and I have purchased several of them.

                                                 Sincerely,

                                                 Jane I. Constant
                                                 Reference Librarian

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    #1          17-MAR-1994 10:35:16.59
NEWMAIL
From:   IN%"LBEARDSLEY@RCNVMS.RCN.MASS.EDU"
To:     IN%"jconstant@umassd.edu"
CC:
Subj:   Information packet


Ms. Constant:

Dan French has forwarded your information packets to me and I wanted to
thank you for sharing them with those of us who are thinking about
developing curriculum frameworks. I will share them with the writers of the
frameworks as several of the articles/material you sent are relevant to
issues the groups are grappling with after their first March meeting. The
media literacy issue is especially interesting. Not only the English group,
but also the Health, the Arts and the History and Social Studies people
have mentioned the impact of media and how children understand and
interpret media to be an especially important topic to consider.

I was also interested in the learning styles material. It is helpful to
some degree, although I do question the word "incapable" as applied
to the descriptions of learners. For example, "Incapable of thinking
through a problem..." As one who believes strongly in the power of the
inclusive classroom, and carefully about the strengths and challenges
all learners demonstrate, I think we need to be careful when using
words like "incapable" to describe students of any age or ability.
Hopefully Oklahoma is not labelling students too quickly!

The next two-day meeting of our framework groups will be in Sturbridge
on April 5 & 6. I will make your materials available to people.
Once again, thank you so much for your interest in this huge and
historic task! Let me know if there is any information you would
like to have!

Best Wishes,
Linda V. Beardsley
617 388 3300 Ext.270
lbeardsley@mass.edu

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