Storyboarding Year Long Curriculum

Today, we're going to talk about a concept that might make you feel like you're in Hollywood - storyboard your curriculum! According to Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Allison Zmuda, two leading experts in the field of education, storyboarding your curriculum can be a great way to engage your students and ensure that they're actually learning something.

Now, you may be thinking, "Storyboarding? That sounds like something Pixar does, not something I do in my classroom." Think about it - a good story has a clear structure, engaging characters, and a meaningful message. Isn't that exactly what we want our lessons to be?

Jacobs and Zmuda argue that by using the principles of storyboarding, we as teachers can create more engaging and memorable lessons for our students. Just like a movie or a graphic novel, a lesson can have a clear beginning, middle, and end, with each component building upon the last to create a cohesive and compelling narrative.

But why stop at just one lesson? Jacobs and Zmuda encourage us to think about the entire curriculum as a story, with each unit or module serving as a chapter in a larger narrative. By doing so, we can help our students make connections between different topics and see how they all fit together.

Now, some of you may be thinking, "But I teach math/science/history - how can I turn that into a story?" Fear not, dear teachers, because Jacobs and Zmuda provide plenty of examples of how to do just that. They suggest using characters (both real and fictional) to help anchor the material, creating plot lines that illustrate key concepts, and using multimedia to add depth and dimension to the narrative.

But perhaps the best part of "Storyboarding Your Curriculum" is the creative freedom it allows us as teachers. No longer are we beholden to dry textbooks and rote memorization. Instead, we can let our imaginations run wild and create lessons that are as fun and engaging as they are informative.

So, in conclusion, if you're looking to inject some excitement into your teaching, give "Storyboarding Your Curriculum" a read. Who knows - you may just discover your inner Steven Spielberg (or at the very least, your inner Pixar animator).