A Simple Curriculum Framework To Hold Us in Good Stead

Making (Grade 1, Newark)

Today's my birthday and I want to remember that aesthetic methods of teaching-learning can be fashioned into a simple, yet essential framework to organize ways of knowing. The framework below is adapted from Eric Booth's important work on art that he outlines in The Everyday Work of Art. I'd recommend it.

Here's the framework:

1. Make things with meaning.
2. Explore the things others have made.
3. Bring the skills, dispositions, and strategies from # 1 and #2 into active play in your daily life.

Booth recommends locating these three acts within 3 worlds:

1. Making worlds.
2. Exploring worlds.
3. Reading the world.  (I change this to Composing the world).

That's it.

Now compare this with all of the standards and frameworks that we currently labor beneath.