Reflections of Havergal: 1994-2019

SCHOOL LIFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CURRICULUM OVERVI EW

challenge schools to find ways to reconstruct teaching and learning by breaking down the silos that compartmentalize learning into discipline-related fields and to seek structures and opportunities to connect disciplines through dynamic, problem-solving approaches. Thus, students will learn in ways that bring real-world problems and issues into the realm of the classroom and experience the transference of skills and modes of thinking from one discipline to another. It is important to note that these two frameworks, Understanding by Design and Cultures of Thinking, reflect the values at the core of pedagogical strategies on which the school already draws. These include collaborative learning and learning conversations, both of which have a long and lauded history at Havergal, as well as relatively new strategies such as experiential learning whose value is quickly becoming clear. Davis puts it this way: A liberal arts approach emphasizes multiple thinking frameworks. The big issues that share our lives and the

aware of their own dispositions, their own “habits of mind,” by making thinking visible. As Harvard’s Project Zero website makes clear, teachers creating cultures of thinking make extensive use of learning routines that are thinking rich. These routines are simple structures, for example, a set of questions or a short sequence of steps, that can be used across various grade levels and content. What makes them routines, versus merely strategies, is that they get used over and over again in the classroom so that they become part of the fabric of classroom culture. The routines become the ways in which students go about the process of learning. One routine that has long been found useful at Havergal is “think/pair/share”: the teacher poses a thought- provoking question, each student takes time to respond in writing, perhaps in a special journal, and then students, in pairs, share their ideas and discuss them.  As Young Um noted in “Teaching and Learning at Havergal” in the Spring 2013 issue of Torch , for teachers, creating a culture of thinking requires an understanding of how the cultural forces in the classroom work together to encourage student thinking and how to use these forces in a deliberate manner. These forces include time, opportunities, routines and structures, language, modelling, interactions and relationships, and physical environment. Different learning strategies give teachers the tools to have different types of discussions in class and to encourage specific ways of thinking. The cultures of thinking approach prepares students for a larger world, where they will need to draw on well-honed critical and creative thinking skills if they are indeed to “make a difference.” As Lois Rowe, Vice Principal, observed in “Breaking Down the Silos” in the Spring 2014 issue of Torch , Howard Gardner’s concepts (like those of Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe and Ron Ritchhart)

Upper School Chemistry class, 2013.

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