English Training and Curriculum Development in Support of

21st Century English Learning and 1-to-1

Rationale: MICDS is moving into a 1:1 environment that will require the development of
a sustainable, forward-thinking curriculum. The english department must determine how
to move forward in an environment that is 1:1 and affords additional opportunities for
teaching and learning. In addition to school-wide technology training to support 1 to 1,
significant curriculum revision and department specific teacher training must occur to be
successful.

Background Reading
• NCTE Adopted Proposal - http://www.ncte.org/about/gov/129117.htm and
Attached
• Designing Process-Oriented Guided-Inquiry Activities -
http://www.pogil.org/downloads/Designing_POGIL_Activities.pdf

Focus areas

• Writing and Publishing Electronically

• Communication in Other Media
• Managing Information (Read blogs thru RSS readers, Netvibes pages)

Objectives:
• Examine the NCTE proposal and discuss what it means for the 21st Century
English Classroom
• Examine the role of blogging and writing for audience
• Examine the ways technology can support peer editing
• Examine the potential benefits of electronic grading to support student portfolios.
• Examine ways technology can be used for formative assessment (clickers,
webassign, OneNote, DyKnow)
• Examine areas where English classes can collaborate and communicate in a
global world
• Examine the extent to which intellectual property should be taught and modeled
in the English classroom
• Examine the use of web 2.0 tools that might facilitate learning – quizlet,
xtimelines, google ed apps

Goals:
• Develop understanding of 21st century Literacies
• Increase use of formative assessment
• Increase opportunities to write and publish for greater audience
• Develop opportunities to interact, communicate, collaborate with global audience
• Determine places where multimedia can be effectively utilized
• Identify ways to teach design in the creaetion process
• Develop Rubrics to help assess multimedia and other non-traditional projects
 Toward A Definition of 21st-Century Literacies
Adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee
February 15, 2008

Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of
particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the
intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person
possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online
newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past,
they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals
and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology

• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and
cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of
purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous
information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments