Winners: A Collection of Cooperatively Developed Teaching Units for Resource-Based Learning

Sheree Haughian is an elementary-school teacher-librarian with the
Dufferin County Board of Education.

Cross-curricular, cross-grade-level, and cross-Canadian are terms that
describe the wide variety of resource-based units featured in this book.
The 37 “winners” were selected by a team

and compiled as models of collaborative planning. The vast diversity of
content and approach is harnessed by the inclusion of a kind of generic
framework. General goal, specific objectives, instructional strategies,
resources, evaluation, and revision seem to conform to the

types of planning models regularly observed in curriculum design,
regardless of geographical location.

Even among this “chosen” group, some selections are more stellar
than others. For the most part, the primary units are set up as
“centres,” with multiple activities taking place at the same time.
While this approach may appear busy and involving, it demands
considerable independence by the student participants, most of whom will
not yet have developed a wide repertoire of learning skills. Can this
approach really extend thinking as fully as can more direct instruction
in ways of formulating questions, searching for relevant information,
and taking notes? At higher grade levels, the units appear to offer many
more possibilities for the teaching of the inquiry process, which is not
to suggest that they are either listless or dull.

Teachers and teacher-librarians searching for new instructional
dimensions in history, poetry, or even mathematics will be rewarded with
some very engaging ideas. In her introduction, the editor stresses that
no unit from the collection will likely fit perfectly into another’s
curriculum; planning teams are encouraged to borrow and amend as
required. Who needs a further invitation?