Curriculum Research & Development Group

A daily dose of poetry.

 

CRDG

Research & Curriculum Development | pg.7
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Cross Currents
www.crosscurrents.hawaii.edu

cross currents photoWork continued in 2005 on Cross Currents, a multimedia website that explores the relationship between the United States and Japan throughout the past fifty years. This bilingual site contains pictures, videos, graphs, and a variety of primary documents that are easily accessible to teachers and students. The Cross Currents development team consists of content and design specialists from CRDG, the UH College of Social Sciences, the UH School of Communication, and Tokyo University.

Local and international teachers provided positive feedback on the site’s content and usability during the 2005 workshops. The new scrapbook component, which allows teachers and students to create and manage interactive projects, is of particular interest to teachers. The project will continue with content development and classroom testing through 2006.

Here’s what local high school students have to say about Cross Currents:
“I like the mini videos and charts, which were informative and useful.”
“[The site] is easy to navigate.”
“I liked the variety of topics.”

 

A Daily Dose of Poetry
The Golden Triangle English program developed by the CRDG English Section is based on the concept of small daily doses of learning over many years. Students in the program do journal writing, dictation sentence study, and oral reading every day. Over many years these small doses add up to consistently high scores on standardized tests and a high level of competence in writing once students go on to college or work. This year, program developers are experimenting with the same concept for teaching poetry. Cheryl Harstad’s eighth graders and Bill Teter’s twelfth graders have been getting small daily doses of poetry over much of the school year, rather than the traditional unit wherein exposure to poetry comes in blocks of the full class period, but for just a few days or weeks. As with the other components of the Performance English program, the English faculty believe this will result in a stronger long-term knowledge and appreciation of poetry by all students.

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