Definition: A form of curriculum design (pre-K to 12) in which teachers and students pursue long term intellectual investigations built around significant projects and performances. The investigations take students out into the world and bring the world into the classroom. Often they provide students with opportunities to serve the wider community. The learning expedition is marked by equal attention to goals of academic content and performance, and character development and community. Opportunities for ongoing assessment are woven throughout the expedition, pushing students to higher levels of achievement.

General Qualities (Underlying Principles):

• A strong connection to the world, inside and outside the classrooms focus on linking the classroom and the outside world, fully drawing on school and community resources.
• Teachers possess a passion for learning and alertness to opportunity, and endeavor to help their students share the same.
• High standards and stakes-an emphasis on student work of consequence, quality, and value in major projects as well as ongoing, smaller tasks and assignments.
• Expanding time and space to make room for in-depth expeditions, fieldwork, teachers' collaboration, and multi-disciplinary connections.
• Leadership and organization on the part of teachers and students.
• New roles for learners-images of groups of students as crews, and individual students as explorers and apprentices.
• A clear focus on assessment and understanding-fostering a continuous process of reflection, critique, and revision among teachers and students. Everyone is constantly asking, "How am I doing?"

Key Components/Entry Points in Planning

• Theme/Topic
• Guiding questions
• Clear set of learning goals (consistent with school, district, or state guidelines)
• Major/final project as an assessment task

(A "plan" is a written document outlining your plans for the learning expedition.)

Planning learning expeditions is a creative and collaborative process for which every group will develop its personal approach. The following questions are presented to stimulate and support your work.

What is the theme or topic of your learning expedition?

The focus and content of the learning expedition should include the most important ideas and concepts from your disciplines that you, as a teacher, believe all students must understand deeply. What background knowledge and skills will students need to develop and use in order to produce strong work in the expedition? What big ideas will students grapple with, and are they important to know? Will students have ample opportunity to use different modes of inquiry?

The theme/topic of a learning expedition should be rich and complex enough to support well developed guiding questions. It should also be concrete enough to be accessible to students' experience and interests.

A good theme/topic allows the learning expedition to encompass more than one discipline and make connections across fields of knowledge.

What are the guiding questions that you hope to explore with the students through this learning expedition?

Learning Expeditions begin with thought provoking, searching questions that provide pathways into subject matter. The questions are often big and overarching and guide the inquiry into a particular content area. For example the question, "What separates humans from other animals?", can lead into a learning expedition on the animal kingdom. Or the question, "How do we create a just society?", can lead into a learning expedition on justice or government. However, these big questions quickly lead to derivative questions that are more tightly focused ("Is language a uniquely human form of communication?", "What responsibilities should a government have to its citizens. And what responsibilities should people have to their government?"). Bear in mind that seemingly simple, mundane topics such as 'bugs', 'kites', or 'pond life' can lead to rich and important questions, many of which will be generated by the students themselves. Good guiding questions:

• ask students to solve or investigate an interesting problem or dilemma, or make a decision about an important issue or problem;
• probe deeply and challenge students to think critically;
• ask students to explore important ideas, problems and methods of inquiry that lie at the heart of a discipline, or a domain of knowledge;
• are open-ended (no "one right answer"), provocative and controversial;
• are meaningful (or can be made meaningful) to students.

What are your learning goals?

At the close of this learning expedition what do you want your students:

• to know (content)
• to be able to do (performance)
• to be like (dispositions)
• Learning expeditions involve in-depth inquiry. They ask students to:

• View issues and problems from a variety of perspectives (Whose view point are we seeing? What other viewpoints might there be if we changed perspectives?);
• look for evidence: evaluate for bias (What's my evidence for what I believe? How credible is it?);
• draw upon their prior knowledge;
• examine, analyze and investigate relationships between different ideas, people, events, concepts and phenomena (How is one thing connected to another? Is there a pattern here?);
• connect what they're learning to the real world.

A good learning expedition provides opportunities for students to communicate their ideas. Students should be able to:

• use multiple resources to create and present strong written and oral work;
• organize their ideas in a clear, coherent and convincing way;
• use persuasive, lively and descriptive language;
• construct original products and express themselves through a variety of artistic genres.
• present and explain their work to a discerning audience;
• Learning expeditions also foster strong work habits (e.g. organization. perseverance, planning and follow through) and strong working relationships (e.g. listening, sharing ideas, trust and compassion).

What ideas do you have for projects within this learning expedition?

Projects are composed of a variety of products, task, and/or demonstrations that students carry out both individually and in groups, including opportunities for fieldwork and service.

Learning expeditions leave room for student choice in determining and shaping projects. Good projects:

• ask the seemingly impossible of students
• provide a compelling application for an academically rigorous body of knowledge and skills
• include a balance of group and individual tasks, allowing individual students to stretch beyond their perceived limits
• are broken down into discrete components to provide frequent checkpoints for teachers to monitor student progress and for students to engage in the ongoing assessment of their own work and that of their peers
• confront students with the real-world problems and emulate the approaches, materials, language, and standards that professionals in the world outside of school would use to solve those problems
• engage students with a rich variety of resources (for instance, books, maps, models, poetry, primary sources, paintings, sculptures, murals, and music; software programs, films and videos; and experts, companies, and neighborhood organizations)

How will you assess to what extent the goals of the learning expedition have been met?

Throughout the learning expedition, ongoing assessment

• includes opportunities for students to assess and evaluate their work against clear standards at many different junctures
• includes critique sessions, peer revision, conferences, discussions of the qualities of good work by examining exemplars, and development of standards and criteria for what makes good work
• allows time for individual reflection in between assessment activities
• provides teachers with opportunities to reflect on make adjustments to their practice
• culminates with an exhibition, demonstration, performance, or portfolio review that gives students a chance to knit together what they have learned and to display their learning to an outside audience; such culminating exhibitions call upon students to demonstrate the most important ideas, knowledge, and performances they must know and be able to do.
• F. A few final considerations for developing a learning expedition:
• What is the time line or projected sequence?
• What are the ideas for openin@ck-off activities?
• What are the ideas for incorporating service into the expedition?
• Is there a role for parents in the planning, implementation and assessment of the expedition?
• How will the design principles be reflected in this learning expedition?

Some of these ideas are drawn from the "Habits of Mind" developed by Central Park East Secondary School and the Coalition of Essential Schools.