On November 22, 2016, I gave the monthly Power Up Lecture at a municipal junior high school in Saitama City. There were three main parts to the lecture. The first part focused on the contribution the school made to the Global Studies program by examining the school’s work. The second part explored principles of implementing Global Studies through with examples from three programs (units) in each grade. And the third part of the lecture was an open discussion. 

The school’s example

The host school, while not strictly following the activities outlined in the Global Studies manual, has developed a process of teaching lessons that is aligned with the aims of Global Studies. Students first form groups and decide on topics. Students then find information about these topics and write about them. Finally students give poster presentations about their topics.

The good point to this process is that teachers and students are able to adjust to the flow of a project rather quickly. This makes teaching and assessing easier, too. These are powerful motivations for teaching in this way.

Teaching programs in Global Studies

The main focus of this PUL was to have teachers study programs as the basic unit of curriculum. Programs are units of lessons. They are very important for several reasons. First, programs organize instruction so that teachers understand what and how to teach. Second, programs organize learning so that students understand how each part of ever lesson fits together into a bigger whole. These first and second points also mean that instruction and learning spirals.

At the start of a program, teachers should give an orientation to the students. The orientation should include the goal of the program (At the end of this program you will be able to write a book report about a story you read), the program goal’s relationship to the term goal (That is important because this term we are learning about giving presentations and writing a book report uses similar skills), and a detailed demonstration of what success looks like in the program (Read my book report. I uses all of the skills you will learn in this program). One more important point it to tell students clearly what they will be responsible for and to give them clear idea of when they will be assessed.

The lessons of the program are taught toward the goal of the program. This goal is represented by the program performance. For the example given above, that would be writing an actual book report. Teachers use the text book and Global Studies materials such as the student worksheets and extensive readings. To help students mentally organize cognitively complex tasks, the program performance (as a representation of the program goal) is broken into program skills.

What are program skills?

Program goals and their corresponding performances are complex tasks. For example, writing a book report on an article requires that students be able to effectively read and understand a text, then analyze it and select the most important parts of the story. Finally, students have to make convincing recommendations about the text. To help students mentally organize cognitively complex tasks, the program performance is broken into program skills. 

During this Power Up Lecture (PUL), teachers were shown several examples. Teachers were also invited to practice identifying skills in performances. Once program skills are selected, it is important to find find ways that the skills can be taught using the text book. Often this requires that teachers modify text book activities. For example, teachers might ask students to respond to the dialogues in the text book, or write simple book reports on the stories they read.