1. PULSE is an INTERDISCIPLINARY curriculum rather than an integrated curriculum. (An integrated curriculum might be contained within one classroom.) The aim is to create a curriculum that can be used in a variety of school settings (it must be able to taught within traditional disciplines as well as a more fluid setting) that allows and encourages students to synthesize lessons and develop conceptual understanding that they can apply to the world around them.

2. PULSE uses ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH as a CONTEXT. Environmental health and biomedical issues are historical and ongoing and we believe capture the student’s attention, they are issues that students can be passionate about.

3. PULSE is CONSTRUCTIVIST in nature. The lesson set up of PULSE is based upon a constructivist approach to learning and uses the learning cycle described below. Students come to the classroom with a personal understanding about the world around them. Lessons should engage students to ask questions about the topic including what they may already know. Lessons allow students to explore these questions and ideas. Students should have opportunity to articulate and explain their understanding based upon their earlier explorations. Finally, students should be given opportunity to apply their understanding in another setting. An ongoing feature of this learning cycle is self and teacher assessment of understanding.

4. Each learning cycle (engage lesson, explore lesson, explain lesson and apply lesson) addresses a big idea for a discipline. Each big idea is central to a student’s understanding of a larger concept. Understanding the big ideas helps a student develop comprehension that allows them to address the driving question behind a unit. For example, “ Migration and migrants are a central feature in American History. Why and how are some migrant populations marginalized? How might this marginalization impact a population’s environmental health and impact American society on a larger scale?”

To establish what the driving question is we use ‘backwards design’: What do we want students to be able to do at the end? What do the standards say? How will the students demonstrate their understanding? What concepts and skills do students have to have? What exercises will teach to those concepts?

5. National Standards have to play a central role in our design; they provide a framework and credibility to our lessons.

Tier	Level	Description	PULSE Example
1st	Big Picture – High School	A universal theme that encompasses all 4 grades.	Understanding Environmental Health & Biomedical Issues
2nd	Grade	A specific theme per grade (9th, 10th, 11th, 12th) that is primarily reflected in the curricula of the science and social studies classes. Typically, language arts act as the bridge between science and social studies. Due to the nature of mathematics curricula, mathematics provides optional supportive lessons that can be taught in another discipline.	10th Grade: Grubs, Germs and Genes - During this year the predominant theme is Revolution
3rd	Quarter	Four quarter themes per grade that support the year-long theme. Each quarter represents 9 weeks of study. Each quarter ends with a major project component.	Dawn of New Revolutions (4th quarter theme)
4th	Big Idea	Each quarter, within each discipline, several big ideas are covered. Each big idea is addressed with a series of lessons that constitute a learning cycle. A learning cycle is the opportunity to become engaged in, explore, explain and apply the understanding behind the big idea.	Why do wars occur? (Social Studies Big Idea)
5th	Lessons	Individual lessons that support the ‘Big Ideas’ in Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, and Mathematics.	What are you eating? (Science lesson)