Before you write a single learning target, ask: Is this an investigation? A design challenge? A case study? A debate? The genre frames the student’s entry into the content, and it signals whether they’re expected to understand something or do something with it.
Here’s a small experiment worth trying. Take a unit you’re currently teaching and finish this sentence: In this unit, students will study ______. Now finish this one: In this unit, students will investigate / solve / design / argue ______. The content might be identical. But the second sentence changes everything about how a student enters the learning — and whether they feel like they have a role to play in it.
This is something Riane Eisler gets at in Tomorrow’s Children through what she calls “cross-stitchings” — the integrating threads of a curriculum that take on real meaning only when they’re woven into something larger. She argues that topics like equity, sustainability, and human rights shouldn’t sit at the margins of a course. They become meaningful when they’re structurally part of the narrative.
I’d take that one step further: they become meaningful when the genre of the learning experience gives students something to actually do with them.
This is what I mean by deliberate genre selection. Before you write a single learning target, ask: Is this an investigation? A design challenge? A case study? A debate? The genre frames the student’s entry into the content, and it signals whether they’re expected to understand something or do something with it.
Topics are static. Problems, questions, and cases have momentum. They pull students forward because there’s something unresolved at the center.
This is one of the most energizing parts of curriculum design work — and one of the things I focus on in keynotes, workshops, and consulting partnerships. When a team recasts a tired unit into a compelling problem or question, you can feel the shift in the room. If you’d like to bring that conversation to your school or conference, I’d love to talk.