I chose to look at spiralling the Academic Grade 10 curriculum from a slightly different perspective. Instead of weekly chunks of each unit, I looked at how the specific curriculum expectations were grouped and compared that to the time I had allocated for each unit in past teachings of this course. I found then, the introductory week for each unit aligned with “Understanding Basic Concepts”. With that in mind, each unit introductory week introduced key terms and concepts, and was assessed by a short quiz. The correct answers were posted for students to review at their own pace, knowing that we would be revisiting these idea in four weeks time.
In the introductory week of each unit, I also introduced the investigation students would be exploring as they developed knowledge and competency for the topic. I encouraged them to write down ideas and questions that the first week’s lessons engaged, hoping to begin development of self-reflection and self-directed learning. The Unit Challenges were, in brief: Climate Change – make predictions to future effects of climate change on a chosen country or region, based on what exists now and what we know about human and natural factors affecting climate change. This also included a literacy component on learning to write effective reports.