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Curating the K–12 Transdisciplinary Learning Environment
cu-rat-ing (verb)
To take charge of or organize; to pull together, sift through and select for presentation.
Present-day schools echo the paradigm of the Industrial Age with schedules, physical facilities, and rigid margins among administration, grade levels, content areas, classrooms, and student-teacher relationships. Curating a transdisciplinary multisensory learning environment goes beyond rigor and relevance and requires vigor and vigilance to develop an intentional and coherent K–12 framework to support the professional learning of teacher-colleagues to improve literacy learning and instruction. Currently, society demands multisensory learning environments that support people, places, and ideas, and are fluid in their organization of space, time, and technologies. A positive relationship among these factors promotes robust professional learning communities of practice grounded in respect, trust, and collaboration among students, teacher-colleagues, teacher leaders, and families. In constructing such learning environments, we come closer to the vision John Dewey (1980) expressed over 100 years ago:
With his words, Dewey has set the standard for families and school systems.
Traditionally, a learning environment conjures up mental pictures of a school, a classroom, a library—everything in perfect rows facing a focal area; generally, the teacher. Although learning may take place in such physical locations, we need to consider that a learning environment can be a blended space with face-to-face or virtual and online interactions. A useful way to think about transdisciplinary literacy learning environments is as elegant and graceful structures that facilitate conditions for learning—structures that buttress individual learning needs based on strengths and scaffolds positive social-emotional interaction for effective and efficient learning. Learning environments are the structures, mechanisms, and communities that arouse curiosity, wonder, and instill awe among students and teacher-colleagues. In other words, these structures serve to motivate, interest, and engage all learners. We use the term learners broadly to include all levels of educators and the students they impact. We use great educators are great students first as our guiding mantra throughout this text and have a strong belief that schools have to be a place of learning for all who are in it if positive forward shifts are to occur (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988).
Learning must be grounded in social collaboration to promote formal and informal learning. Or what Vygotsky (1992) has called scientific and spontaneous learning. Although we are addressing the need to curate a multisensory learning environment in this chapter, we do not want to lose sight of the importance of such multi-tiered systems of support as: understanding literacy learning as a process; using static and dynamic assessments to inform practice; using narrative (literature) and non-narrative (informational) texts; investigating instructional practices; and putting in place systems for ongoing professional learning. While understanding that these multi-tiered systems of support will be discussed separately, it is important to remember that each topic or issue is a critical component for curating a multisensory learning environment and a coherent K–12 transdisciplinary literacy framework for instruction.
Intentional and coherent learning occurs when these structures are aesthetically and seamlessly integrated into a consistent whole in which each structure is dependent on and supports the other. It is worth emphasizing too, that these support structures are valuable not as ends, but as means to a greater goal—to nurture students, and the teacher-colleagues that teach them, emotionally, socially, physically, and academically. Transdisciplinary literacy learning and instruction has to be intimately intertwined with social, emotional, and physical health. Therefore, a multisensory learning environment must deal with the multifaceted and interconnected learning needs of students while at the same time capitalizing on their strengths.
Our experiences have taught us that if real acceleration in learning is to occur, we have to take the learners’ strengths into account (Dweck, 2016). The prevalent viewpoint of assessing needs, remediating deficits, and solution seeking as the best routes to learning and teaching is no longer adequate for current learners (Csíkszentmihályi & Schneider, 2001; Schreiner & Anderson, 2005). Acceleration in learning will be hindered if we only look at students’ needs or deficits. At first glance, a multisensory learning environment may seem to be one of several support structures in a coherent K–12 transdisciplinary literacy framework (see Figure 1.1), but in fact it takes multi-tiered systems of support to ensure coherent transdisciplinary instruction and learning over time. We have learned from the popular systematic and explicit approach to instruction. We now need to move on to an intentional and coherent approach to instruction. Curating a transdisciplinary multisensory learning environment is an aligned and synergistic framework of overlapping scaffolds that:
1.Creates professional learning opportunities, where teacher support and the physical environment is employed to scaffold literacy learning and instruction.
2.Supports professional learning communities of practice, RtI2, and lesson study that enable teacher-colleagues to collaborate, construct, and execute an array of lessons that coherently support student learning across disciplines as they progress through grade levels.
3.Motivates and engages students to learn across disciplines in relevant contexts with vigor and vigilance.
4.Provides access to quality culturally sensitive and age-appropriate off-line and on-line resources.
5.Includes designated areas for large group, small group, and individual learning.
6.Supports extended community and international involvement in learning, both face-to-face and online; and
7.Is founded on implementing conditions for learning.
Informed by research and grounded in common sense life-long learning, this transdisciplinary multisensory environment promotes learning specifically aimed at the strengths, needs, interests, and desires of the student and the teacher-colleagues that facilitate the learning. It is designed to promote intentional and coherent, rather than just systematic and explicit, learning and instruction. Such learning and instruction offer literacy learning and instruction across core disciplines (language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and the arts). The most effective learning environments today are more flexible, colorful, purposeful, and engaging than their 20th-century counterparts; they are differentiated, personalized, and targeted to students’ sensual learning (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or tactile).
| Word Study |
| Kindergarten to Grade 1 15 minutes | Grade 1–Grade 2 15 minutes | Grade 3–Grade 5 15 minutes | Grade 6–Grade 12 10–20 minutes |
| Options: | Options: | Options: | Options: |
| • Interactive read aloud | • Interactive read aloud | • Collaborative read aloud | • Collaborative read aloud |
| • Shared reading theater | • Shared reading | • Shared reading | • Choral reading or readers’ theater |
| • Interactive or shared writing | • Interactive or shared writing | • Modeled or collaborative writing | • Modeled or collaborative writing |
| • Transdisciplinary word study | • Transdisciplinary word study | • Interactive edit | • Interactive edit |
| • Interactive spelling instruction | • Interactive spelling instruction | • Transdisciplinary word study | • Transdisciplinary word study |
| • Phonics focus lesson | • Phonics focus lesson | • Poetry sharing/ response | • Poetry sharing/ response |
| • Handwriting (print)/Keyboarding | • Handwriting (print)/Keyboarding | • Handwriting (cursive)/Keyboarding | • Test reading and writing |
| • Interactive vocab. instruction | • Interactive vocab. instruction | • Interactive vocab. instruction | • Interactive vocab. instruction |
| Comprehension Instruction and Meaningful Practice |
| Kindergarten to Grade 1 45 minutes | Grade 1–Grade 2 45 minutes | Grade 3–Grade 5 45 minutes | Grade 6–Grade 12 40–70 minutes |
| Options: | Options: | Options: | Options: |
| • Guided reading (phased in K as appropriate second semester) | • Guided reading (small group instruction) | • Guiding readers (small group Instruction/ learning discussion) | • Guiding learners (smell group or individual text dependent conversations) |
| • Independent literacy work at workstations (computer station, listening station, writing station, art station, ABC station, etc.) | • Independent literacy work at workstations (gradually increasing to project-centered activities in grade 2, second semester.) | • Project-centered activities utilizing resource stations (computer stations, art station, writing station, etc.) | • Independent project-centered activities utilizing resource stations (computer stations, art station, writing station, etc.) |
| • Sharing (minimum 5–10 minutes) | • Sharing (minimum 5–10 minutes) | • Sharing (minimum 5–10 minutes) | • Sharing (minimum 5–10 minutes) |
| Integrated Writing Instruction | Note: Minutes are approximations based on general elementary, middle, and high school schedules. List of instructional practices is illustrative, not exhaustive. Puig & Froelich, 2021 |
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