A few months ago, I broached the subject of a "Middle Earth" course at http://thielmann.blogspot.ca/2012/04/middle-earth-11-rough-course-proposal.html.
While I have an educational and teaching background in both English and Geography, it did not occur to me until recently that an interesting combination of these two disciplines would be possible. I think the milieu for curricular experiments has opened up (or come around again), and with support for "project exploration" from students, teachers, and administration, I'd like to offer a course next year at my school (D.P. Todd) that blends BC's English 11 and Geography 12 and takes place in two blocks during one semester. The course will address all corresponding PLOs and a "hook" to the course will involve literary and geographical examples drawn from Tolkien's Middle Earth, albeit as a point of departure rather than a destination.
A special dimension to this course offering is the blended learning delivery model. One of the two blocks for which the students sign up will look much like a traditional classroom with expectations for regular attendance, direct instruction from the teacher, and so on. The second block will be "flipped" -- this is project-based learning time, tutorial, independent work, seminar and small group sessions for the teacher and students. In designing a course this way I am attempting to respond, interpret, and interrogate the BCEd Plan and "personalized learning" in a way that makes sense to me, our students, and our school. At a practical level, it allows students create some personal designs around their own learning without losing the guidance offered from a well-planned program of study and a committed teacher they interact with daily.
I would like to involve others with some of the early planning and feedback, as this course offering will affect the 2013-2014 teaching timetable for our school and will not look the same as a regular course. I would like to see the work my students and I do as part of the continuum of language, literacy, and communication goals that are common within the English and Social Studies department at my school.
The course will be a "program" in the sense of how our "Socials 90 program" at D.P. Todd combines two courses and requires some special commitments. This project is tentatively titled Language & Landscape 11. As a new offering, it may simply be a double-registration in English 11 and Geography 12, although we are open to this being a pilot program and containing a unique stand-alone Gr. 12 credit (board-authorized). Sorting this out is part of the "project exploration" to ensure access, quality, and funding consistent with other courses and programs.
If you are interested, please let me know what you think in person, by email, twitter, or a comment below, preferably some time in the next month. I covet your feedback and opportunities to collaborate on this project. Specifically, I would appreciate links and suggestions for blended delivery, crossovers lesson topics between English/Language Arts and Geography/Environmental education, and PBL ideas that make sense in the tradition of Middle Earth studies and both academic disciplines. I've got my own ideas on to make a go of this, but I also know that others would like to contribute. General comments, warnings, laughs, and questions are welcome too!
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