Afterword And so we return to the idea of the curriculum as prototype. While the design of our third grade curriculum will continue to evolve as students and teachers work and learn together, it will do so in the context of a series of scaffolded lower, middle, and high school experiences. These curricular iterations also leverage and extend the design, making and entrepreneurial skills that were essential to our third graders’ experience. In so doing, our students’ inquiry into the past will not only inform their present, but will inform their future as well.
Glossary Definitions adapted from http://www.imaginative-inquiry.co.uk and https://tesoldrama.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/process-dramaconventions.pdf Imaginative Inquiry A teaching/learning approach that brings together three pedagogic strategies: community of inquiry, drama for learning, and mantle of the expert. Exciting and meaningful contexts for learning are used to engage students in challenging and purposeful curriculum activities. Inquiry Learning The curriculum is seen as something to explore rather than deliver, and children are active agents in this process. Students and teachers work together to acquire, apply, and develop new knowledge, skills, and understanding. Drama for Learning Using the conventions of theater (point of view, tension, and narrative), students and teachers work together to invent imaginary scenarios that give meaning and purpose to curriculum study. It is not a performance, and does not require acting. It is a role-play game where participants make up the rules and invent the moves. Process Drama Conventions: ● Teacher/Student-in-Role: The teacher manages the learning possibilities and opportunities provided by the dramatic context from within the drama by adopting a suitable role in order to achieve such results as exciting interest, controlling the action, inviting involvement, creating tension, challenging superficial thinking, or developing narrative. Students-in-Role signifies students who are enrolled as specific characters in the narrative. ● Narration: The narrator sets the scene, signals a transition, and/or directs the characters’ actions in a narrative “overlay” while 38