It’s Not Rocket Science!

It’s Not Rocket Science! Designing Meaningful Learning Experiences in the Elementary Classroom is a hands-on manual that streamlines the curriculum design processby utilizing a four-step approach: deconstructing, reconstructing, lesson planning,and assessing. Grounded in a theoretical framework that all students, regardless ofbackground, are entitled to high quality learning, this step-by-step method allowsteachers to create structured, cohesive units of study that impact students’ lives,while at the same time providing the opportunity for teachers to thoroughly analysea content area before creating learning experiences. Included are concrete examples,strategies and templates that help educators create active and engaging lessons forstudents.

"In It’s Not Rocket Science! Designing Meaningful Learning Experiences in the Elementary Classroom Robert Blake and Lisa Trattner pare down the planning process to fivecentral questions that need to be internalized by teachers, educational leaders, allwho engage in the educational process, even including students. Far too much iswasted by the drudgery of requiring educators to pursue endless hours of writinglesson plans, only to find that they don’t meet the ever-changing needs of educationalsituations. Like living a good philosophy of life, embodying these questionsnourishes seeds of imagination and improvisation that enrich teaching and learningmoment by moment by enhancing the meaning that students experience. Althoughit may not be as technically sophisticated as rocket science, it may be more important.It collaboratively reconstructs the next (and hopefully better) generations ofhuman beings!"

—William H. Schubert. Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction, and Former University Scholar, University of Illinois Chicago; Fellow of The International Academy of Education; recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in Curriculum Studies of the American Educational Research Association, former President of the John Dewey Society, the Society of Professors of Education, and the Society for the Study of Curriculum History; author of Love, Justice, and Education, co-editor of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies (with Ming Fang He), and more than 25 books and 250 articles and chapters