Integrated Curriculum Planning Framework with

Contextual Areas and Sample Focus Questions

Contextual Areas

Global

Time

Symbolic

Relationship

 

Interdependence, sustainability, diversity, partnership, change, cycles, energy flows

Past, present, future

Changes through time

Natural and human arrangements of systems and information and their similarities and differences

Individual or group views and relationships

Individual and group principled procedures

Communities

Sample focus questions:

What can we learn from natural systems?

What are the natural constraints that humans must learn to live with?

How are natural systems similar and different?

How do they work in partnerships?

How do they evolve?
Are there fluctuations that are cyclic?

How does energy flow through the system?

How has human’s relationship to the Earth changed over time?

What will it be in the future?
How has it changed?

How do natural systems function?

What are the patterns that are similar in human systems and natural systems?

How do we represent natural systems?
How do we repesent systems for science, literature, mathematics, language, art, music, literature, movement…

How does my body work as a system?"

How do I depend on the Earth?

What is my relationship to Earth?

How do I use natural resources?

How do people relate to me?

How does civilization depend on me?

How do I depend on civilization?

What is the communities’ relationship to me and me to it?

How does the community fit with my individual preferences?

Robert Sweetland's Notes ©