The Parallel Curriculum in the Classroom, Book 2

Learn to design exemplary Parallel Curriculum Units from the experts―classroom teachers!

What is the best way to incorporate the four parallels into your Parallel Curriculum Unit? How do teachers using the Parallel Curriculum Model (PCM) craft units based on the PCM and why do they utilize certain elements and downplay others? What does a complete Parallel Curriculum Unit look like? This compilation of Parallel Curriculum Units provides a close-up look into the development of PCM units and how those units work in actual classroom settings.

The Parallel Curriculum in the Classroom, Book 2 reflects a variety of Parallel Curriculum units spanning primary, elementary, middle, and high school levels of instruction and encompassing the disciplines of social studies, science, art, math, and language arts. Across each unit, the authors present a framework of three essential components in an effective Parallel Curriculum Unit:

• The big picture of grade level, subject, goals, and standards
• The unpacking, or step-by-step explanation of the unit
• The reasoning behind the unit design

Whether using each parallel independently or combining all four parallels into curriculum design, teachers will find the units included here are exemplary models for creating their own parallel curriculum units. Use them as professional development tools to help plan thoughtful curriculum based upon the Parallel Curriculum Model!

Carol Ann Tomlinson‘s career as an educator includes 21 years as a public school teacher. She taught in high school, preschool, and middle school, and worked with heterogeneous classes as well as special classes for students identified as gifted and students with learning difficulties. Her public school career also included 12 years as a program administrator of special services for advanced and struggling learners. She was Virginia’s Teacher of the Year in 1974. She is professor of educational leadership, foundations, and pol­icy at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education; a researcher for the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented; a codirec­tor of the University of Virginia’s Summer Institute on Academic Diversity; and president of the National Association for Gifted Children. Special interests through­out her career have included curriculum and instruction for advanced learners and struggling learners, effective instruction in heterogeneous settings, and bridging the fields of general education and gifted education. She is author of over 100 articles, book chapters, books, and other professional development materials, including How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms, The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, Leadership for Differentiated Schools and Classrooms, the facilitator’s guide for the video staff development sets called Differentiating Instruction, and At Work in the Differentiated Classroom, as well as a professional inquiry kit on differentiation. She works throughout the United States and abroad with teachers whose goal is to develop more responsive heterogeneous classrooms.

Sandra N. Kaplan has been a teacher and administrator of gifted programs in an urban school district in California. Currently, she is clinical professor in learning and instruction at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. She has authored articles and books on the nature and scope of differenti­ated curriculum for gifted students. Her primary area of concern is modifying the core and differentiated curriculum to meet the needs of inner-city, urban, gifted learners. She is a past president of the California Association for the Gifted (CAG) and the National Asso­ciation for Gifted Children (NAGC). She has been nationally recognized for her con­tributions to gifted education.

Jeanne H. Purcell is the consultant to the Connecticut State Depart­ment of Education for gifted and talented education. She is also director of UConn Mentor Connection, a nationally recognized summer mentorship program for talented teenagers that is part of the NEAG Center for Talent Development at the University of Con­necticut. Prior to her work at the State Department of Connecticut, she was an administrator for Rocky Hill Public Schools (CT); a pro­gram specialist with the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, where she worked collaboratively with other researchers on national issues related to high-achieving young people; an instructor of Teaching the Talented, a graduate-level program in gifted education; and a staff developer to school districts across the country and Canada. She has been an En­glish teacher, community service coordinator, and teacher of the gifted, K-12, for 18 years in Connecticut school districts and has published many articles that have appeared in Educational Leadership, Gifted Child Quarterly, Roeper Review, Educa­tional and Psychological Measurement, National Association of Secondary School Principals’ Bulletin, Our Children: The National PTA Magazine, Parenting for High Potential, and Journal for the Education of the Gifted. She is active in the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) and serves on the Awards Committee and the Curriculum Committee of NAGC, for which she is the co-chair for the annual Curriculum Awards Competition.

Jann Leppien served as a gifted and talented coordinator in Montana prior to attending the University of Connecticut, where she earned her doctorate in gifted education and worked as a research assistant at the National Research Center for the Gifted and Talented. She has been a teacher for 24 years, spending 14 of those years working as a classroom teacher, enrichment specialist, and coordinator of the Schoolwide Enrichment Model in Montana. She is past president of the Montana Association for Gifted and Tal­ented Education. Currently, she is an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of Great Falls in Montana. Leppien teaches graduate and under­graduate courses in gifted education, educational research, curriculum and assess­ment, creativity, and methods courses in math, science, and social studies. Her research interests include teacher collaboration, curriculum design, underachievement, and planning instruction for advanced learners. Leppien works as a consultant to teachers in the field of gifted education and as a national trainer for the Talents Unlimited Program. She is coauthor of The Multiple Menu Model: A Par­allel Guide for Developing Differentiated Curriculum. She is active in the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC), serving as a board member and newsletter editor of the Curriculum Division, and a board member of the Association for the Education of Gifted Underachieving Students.

Deborah E. Burns began her teaching career in 1973 as a Title I reading and mathematics teacher in a rural K-8 school in Michigan. She has worked as a K-8 classroom teacher, as a middle school language arts spe­cialist, and as a program coordinator for a seven-district consortium. She has taught in preschool, summer, and Saturday programs, in resource rooms, a psychiatric ward, an orphanage, and at the university level. She has written grants, professional development modules, journal articles, assessments, program evaluations, curriculum units, and three books. She has also designed and implemented class­room-based research studies and conducted program and teacher evaluations. For the past 15 years, she has been employed by the University of Connecticut’s NEAG School of Education as a program director, an assistant professor, a research scien­tist, associate professor in residence, and most recently in Cheshire as curriculum coordinator for the district. She is an active member of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) and has been a board member for the past five years. She is a member of the Curriculum Division and is co-chair of the annual Curriculum Awards Competition. Burns earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary edu­cation from Michigan State University in 1973. She pursued her graduate studies at Western Michigan University in clinical reading instruction and received her MEd from Ashland College in 1978 in remedial reading, administration, and supervision. She pursued additional graduate studies at Ohio State University involving ad­ministration, special education, and gifted education and received her PhD in educational psychology and gifted education from the University of Connecticut in 1987.