Keay Cobbin - Curriculum

In this issue I’m joined once again by Keay Cobbin, who was also my most recent guest on the podcast. There has been lots of positive feedback regarding our first episode together which you can listen to here.There are so many topics that Keay and I could (and often do) discuss, and for this instalment we decided to delve into all things curriculum.We both feel that post-COVID this is often the missing link in schools. In fact, many of the high performing schools we work with have gone back to curriculum this year as part of their school improvement agenda.To start the podcast, I set the scene of what I’ve observed and learnt from Keay over the last nearly 15 years, and what I’ve perceived as the evolution of how Keay thinks about curriculum. Keay then builds on this to talk about how curriculum looked in her grade 3 classroom in 1975 through to how she thinks about it today. We discuss many of the influences, resources and mentors that Keay calls upon in this work and have played a part in Keay becoming a leader in this important component of education. These include:·      Smagorinsky·      Wiggins & McTighe·      Debbie Miller·      Jennifer Serravallo·      Lucy Calkins·      Mike SchmokerFrom here we discussed the importance of allocating collaborative time, and building strong processes in the development of your whole school curriculum.Late in our discussion I also reference a Dr. Rachael Gabriel tweet which makes an analogy between curriculum and cooking, which reinforces many of the points we discuss. As a point of interest, Dr. Gabriel also has a new book out that I’m keen to read.Keay and I are aiming to consistently put podcast content out. Let me know if there is a particular aspect of literacy that you would like us to discuss in a future episode.It might be that you pose questions as a result of some thoughts you had about this edition. Thanks for listening!