We Finally Wrote A Curriculum

When we first decided to try to spread the Four Question Method beyond our own classrooms, we were very naive. We figured we’d go to conferences and give workshops, and teachers would go back home and implement the method. It turned out that we could get invited to conferences and we gave pretty good workshops that teachers liked a lot – but very few of them went back home and revised their teaching materials to reflect the Four Question Method. That’s because rewriting all your lesson plans is a lot of work, and the Four Question Method takes practice to learn; it’s a discipline that you don’t master after a day at a conference. Teachers are real people with real lives, and they’re not going to take hours to re-do everything they have because they liked a workshop.

So then we decided we should write a book to explain 4QM thinking and planning processes. We figured teachers would read the book, and then they’d use its sage guidance to implement the method. That also turned out to be very naive. We did publish a book, and every now and then we hear from a teacher (like Ryan from Spokane!) who has read it and is actually revising their teaching materials based on its principles. But most readers don’t do that. That’s because rewriting all your lesson plans is a lot of work, and the Four Question Method takes practice to learn; it’s a discipline that is difficult to master after just reading a book. Teachers are real people with real lives, and they’re not going to take hours to re-do everything they have because they read a book that says it’s a good idea. 

Finally we came around to facing reality: if we want to spread the Four Question Method beyond a small number of classrooms, we’re going to have to write 4QM curriculum ourselves. We avoided this for a long time because, as we have already noted above, writing curriculum is a lot of work. Quite frankly, we just didn’t want to take it on. But we finally did, and like a lot of things we try to avoid in life, writing curriculum turned out to be more fun than we thought it would be. 

Today we’re almost done with a 4QM U.S. History course that covers 1492-1877. It’s a full school year: ten units, 10 -15 lessons per unit. Each lesson has a complete lesson plan, slides, student handouts, and teacher exemplars for everything. The 4QM team wrote our own narratives for all the Question One lessons, edited primary sources for all the Question Twos, researched data for all the Question Threes, and hashed out all the Question Fours. It’s all there. If you’re reading this blog you probably know that “HQIM” stands for “High Quality Instructional Materials.” That’s what this course is, built from the ground up around the Four Question Method.

We Learned A Ton

Throughout the process we learned a ton from the community of teachers who are testing the curriculum in their own classrooms. We’ve got teachers in three states in grades six through ten using the lessons and giving us regular feedback. (We wrote the curriculum pitched at grade eight, but of course it can scale up or down depending on student skill level.) Because of them, units nine and ten are much better than units one and two – so now we’re going back and revising all the early units to be like the later ones. Stuff we learned:

• It’s better to write our own narratives. One of our slogans is “Story First!” because kids need to know a story before they can think about it. We were trying to use a variety of open sources for kids to learn the historical stories for this course, but it was difficult to find narratives that were clear, complete, and engaging. So we ended up writing our own.
• Teachers need flexibility to differentiate. Our curriculum is being used in an expensive New York City private school, an ex-industrial city in New England, and rural school districts in Texas. We need to provide complete and specific lesson plans, but with options for teachers to push stronger students and support those who struggle. We started giving teachers three options for all Question One lessons, and identifying “mild, medium, and spicy” options for many of the others.
• Practice helps students – and teachers. We heard from several teachers that it took 2-3 units for their students to get the hang of the curriculum. Some reported that their kids weren’t used to thinking this hard in social studies, so there was a bit of a transition period. But as students got familiar with the lesson types and thinking skills that went with each Question, they got better and better at them and started enjoying social studies more than they had before. Teachers also found their own out of school prep time dropping way down as they got familiar with the formats for each Question.

Teachers Shouldn’t Have To Write Curriculum

Gary and I both came from schools where individual teachers were expected to create all their own lessons, and we thought that was normal. It might be normal in a lot of places, but we no longer think it’s good. Teaching is a full time job. Curriculum writing is also, or should be, a full time job. Excellent teachers know how to recognize HQIM, how to adapt it to fit their classrooms and their students, and how to effectively execute the lessons that they choose to use. We’re hoping that now that we’ve written a full course of units and lessons, with more to come, more teachers will choose 4QM. 

J.B.

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