Here’s an idea: A Minimal Viable Curriculum (MVC). That’s what Christian Talbot over at Basecamp is proposing, and I have to say, I love the idea.
He writes: “What if we were to design MVCs: Minimum Viable Curricula centered on just enough content to empower learners to examine questions or pursue challenges with rigor? Then, as learners go deeper into a question or challenge, they update their MVC…which is pretty much how learning happens in the real world.”
The key there to me is that THEY update their MVC. That resonates so deeply; it feels like that’s what I’m doing with my learning each day as I read about and work with school leaders who are thinking deeply about change.
And I’d bet that resonates with anyone who has come to terms with the reality that we learn more in informal, real world environments than we do in formal, school based settings. When we pursue questions that matter to us, rigor is baked in.
Teachers and schools have a role to play in developing students as learners, no doubt. One of those roles to replicate the conditions under which powerful learning takes place in our day to day lives. Moving from a “BFC” (Bloated Forgettable Curriculum) to an “MVC” is a great step in that direction.
I was sooo lucky when I started teaching 5-year-olds in 1968. I had to make sure they
1) KNEW their numbers to 20 – adding, subtracting, etc (maybe even multiplying and dividing if they could),
2) they could read 2 books which included cvc and double consonant words and some useful everyday words that were not phonetic (‘tricky’) words,
3) write all the lower-case letters correctly formed with ‘tails’ so they were ready to join
4) spell as many as possible of the words they were reading and use them to form (very) simple sentences.
The rest was up to me. I had to keep 35 kids busy for four hours a day. Basically it meant using my imagination to invent games and things to do that the children enjoyed. We learned the names of all the flowers (about 30 different ones) on the way from the class to the school gate. we looked at maps and found places on them, tracing routes from one place to another. we mad models with junk material – glue was flour and water! etc, etc,
I love it when pupils now nearly 50 years old come up to me and say, “I used to love the dictionary game” or something similar.
We had fun!