2.2: Research-Based Learner-Centered Strategies
Candidates model and facilitate the use of research-based, learner-centered strategies addressing the diversity of all students. (PSC 2.2/ISTE 2b)
Artifact: ITEC 7430: Internet Lesson Plan / Screen Cast for Internet Lesson Plan
This artifact was created for an International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP) Year 3 (8th Grade) class who were studying aspects of demographics and world development in Geography. This artifact was created by myself and shared with the Individuals and Societies Year 3 teaching team as a short Unit of Inquiry that would address the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). This artifact is aligned to Standard 2.2 Research-Based Learner-Centered Strategies, as the students were presented with research concerning the MDG’s and centered their summative assessment based on their diverse understanding of those MDG’s.
In this Unit of Inquiry, students were presented with the Statement of Inquiry to center their thinking to the Key Concept of Global Interactions. The Statement of Inquiry “Managing disparity by setting goals and intervention strategies helps to make a fair and equitable world” honed into the more subject specific Related Concepts of disparity and equity; management and intervention.
Students were presented with research based statistics and information concerning each one of the eight MDG’s. A Web Quest was designed to help manage student thinking towards the summative assessment in their assigned region of the world, to explore the progress of the MDG’s and to what extent their region had achieved the goals set out in 2000 by reading the most recent MDG Report, gathering data from “The Guardian” MDG resource database, and watching summary videos. Students then created a short screencast of their findings to make recommendations for three additional goals to be added, given their knowledge and understanding of the progress of the goals to date in 2014. This outcome is intrinsically learner-centered as the student takes their understanding of the research, synthesizes the information and presents in a coherent way with an opportunity to pin to a diversity of outcomes given the unique nature of each one of the regions and their responses to the MDG’s across the planet. Students were taught how to use screencasting software (Jing and QuickTime) in order to create their final presentations. Students also spent time in discussion groups using Today’s Meet to wrestle with particular development aspects that they were seeing in their region and to help them benchmark against other world regions and findings from other students.
This was a very diverse class in terms of ability levels and country of origin. To address this, students that came from certain regions of the world were encouraged to research outside their region (for example, a student of Indian origin studied South America). To accommodate the two students with assigned resource assistance and needs in terms of time, I worked with the Resource Teacher to afford them additional time for their summative assessment task in their resource schedule.
While completing this Unit of Inquiry, I learned that this very new material takes more than ten hours of contact teaching time. While the students wrestled with the big ideas of the content, they also had difficulty synthesizing their data into coherent presentations. While these were skills that had been introduced and practiced in their Year 2 (7th Grade) MYP Programme, students reported that they had forgotten important aspects of presentations (therefore requiring some re-teaching) and the three new students to the school found needed to be given some teaching concerning PowerPoint. While the students were very engaged in the task, from their evaluation of the Unit of Inquiry, after we had concluded the summative assessment, many reported that they had spent many hours outside the classroom to complete. Atlanta International School students are very busy – with nine different subjects competing for their attention in MYP, I reflected that I needed to assign more time to this Unit of Inquiry as a whole, and to perhaps scaffold the reading material and skills required earlier on in the school year as part of the overall Geography course to accommodate new students and those that have difficulty retaining skills from one year to another.
While the resulting seventeen screencasts were turned in, there were a few that struggled with the technology and signaled that they would have preferred to present in a real-time setting. This is an option that I would allow for a few students next time.
Two of my colleagues decided to use this Unit of Inquiry for their assessment outcomes (instructing in English and German). Both reported very pleasing learning outcomes, but also agreed that the Unit of Inquiry needed to have more time assigned to its overall delivery. This was assessed using the student end of unit surveys that all teachers in Atlanta International School must issue to students at the conclusion of the teaching of a Unit of Inquiry to align to their Professional Development SMART Goals, which gather data from student feedback to better inform teaching and learning.
In this Unit of Inquiry, students were presented with the Statement of Inquiry to center their thinking to the Key Concept of Global Interactions. The Statement of Inquiry “Managing disparity by setting goals and intervention strategies helps to make a fair and equitable world” honed into the more subject specific Related Concepts of disparity and equity; management and intervention.
Students were presented with research based statistics and information concerning each one of the eight MDG’s. A Web Quest was designed to help manage student thinking towards the summative assessment in their assigned region of the world, to explore the progress of the MDG’s and to what extent their region had achieved the goals set out in 2000 by reading the most recent MDG Report, gathering data from “The Guardian” MDG resource database, and watching summary videos. Students then created a short screencast of their findings to make recommendations for three additional goals to be added, given their knowledge and understanding of the progress of the goals to date in 2014. This outcome is intrinsically learner-centered as the student takes their understanding of the research, synthesizes the information and presents in a coherent way with an opportunity to pin to a diversity of outcomes given the unique nature of each one of the regions and their responses to the MDG’s across the planet. Students were taught how to use screencasting software (Jing and QuickTime) in order to create their final presentations. Students also spent time in discussion groups using Today’s Meet to wrestle with particular development aspects that they were seeing in their region and to help them benchmark against other world regions and findings from other students.
This was a very diverse class in terms of ability levels and country of origin. To address this, students that came from certain regions of the world were encouraged to research outside their region (for example, a student of Indian origin studied South America). To accommodate the two students with assigned resource assistance and needs in terms of time, I worked with the Resource Teacher to afford them additional time for their summative assessment task in their resource schedule.
While completing this Unit of Inquiry, I learned that this very new material takes more than ten hours of contact teaching time. While the students wrestled with the big ideas of the content, they also had difficulty synthesizing their data into coherent presentations. While these were skills that had been introduced and practiced in their Year 2 (7th Grade) MYP Programme, students reported that they had forgotten important aspects of presentations (therefore requiring some re-teaching) and the three new students to the school found needed to be given some teaching concerning PowerPoint. While the students were very engaged in the task, from their evaluation of the Unit of Inquiry, after we had concluded the summative assessment, many reported that they had spent many hours outside the classroom to complete. Atlanta International School students are very busy – with nine different subjects competing for their attention in MYP, I reflected that I needed to assign more time to this Unit of Inquiry as a whole, and to perhaps scaffold the reading material and skills required earlier on in the school year as part of the overall Geography course to accommodate new students and those that have difficulty retaining skills from one year to another.
While the resulting seventeen screencasts were turned in, there were a few that struggled with the technology and signaled that they would have preferred to present in a real-time setting. This is an option that I would allow for a few students next time.
Two of my colleagues decided to use this Unit of Inquiry for their assessment outcomes (instructing in English and German). Both reported very pleasing learning outcomes, but also agreed that the Unit of Inquiry needed to have more time assigned to its overall delivery. This was assessed using the student end of unit surveys that all teachers in Atlanta International School must issue to students at the conclusion of the teaching of a Unit of Inquiry to align to their Professional Development SMART Goals, which gather data from student feedback to better inform teaching and learning.