If I don’t start this post now, if I wait till it is all clear and ready to go, if I wait till it is all done and wrapped up, if I wait till I settle down and plow through my to-do list then this post will never be written, and to be honest with you I am way too excited about my upcoming unit not to write a preview. Please excuse the slapped together feel of this post. I hope I have spent most of my energy planning what I hope will be one of the best units I have ever planned. It starts tomorrow, runs for ten weeks and looks something like this:
Let me start by saying that while everyone extols the virtues of collaboration, it is not easy for me. I often have loud brash ideas that call for taking strange risks, doing things that I have never done before, and making a lot of things up as I go along. This spontaneous style is not always conducive to a team effort, especially if other teachers prefer to have each lesson planned out and have a clearer idea of how things might actually turn out. I mention this not because these are the types of teachers I am working with, on the contrary, my team has been great- open and resourceful, they are full of great ideas and have not only helped shape this unit, but they have also taken ownership of it and helped it become fundamentally sound. Before I continue, let me introduce my team- first my lovely wife Mairin, who has been a champion Techie. (Yes we work in the same department at school. It is fine, but will be changing next year.) You can find her on Twitter and she blogs here and here. And of course our brave and open-minded colleague Dianne. Who has recently started blogging with her classes here. But enough of the team. What has us so excited? Sit back and enjoy the ride-
I am tried of talking the talking of student based, problem based, inquiry driven pedagogy, only to plan units designed and assessed by me. I am tired of seeing the bored look on student faces as I swear what we are learning is fun and relevant. As a team, we wanted to see if we could give more/most of the responsibility to the students. We wanted to find a way to not only engage them by offering choice in content, but empower them to take control of their learning by letting them also design their own assessment. So what will this look like? We are an MYP school so let me walk you through our unit plan. You can find the unit overview here. But here are some of the details:
(The red print below are the MYP objectives and the italicized text are the standard.
We have chosen to use a combination of Arros and TESOL standards by which to assess student learning. )
Basically we want the kids to choose their content/topic as well as their assessment. They will also choose their AOI once they have a clear guiding question. They will choose a topic of interest, with some guidance they will turn this topic into a focused investigate question and begin to do some research. They will be thinking of ways to describe what they are learning in terms of how they express, share or articulate that learning in terms of the MYP Criterion. We will be using Bloom’s Taxonomy to help move students beyond simple data and knowledge gathering to higher level thinking and problem solving. Sound confusing? Let me walk you through it a bit more.
We have created a Google Doc which we are affectionately calling The Matrix. You can find this document here. (I have tried to make sure it is uneditble, but if for some reason it is editable, PLEASE DO NOT EDIT IT.) This document will serve as a guide, calender and feedback sheet for the entire ten weeks of this unit. It will be home for each project. Each student will copy and paste the contents into a new Goggle Doc which they will and share 1-1 with their teacher. This way we can use this space to help guide student for the duration of the unit. We can add notes, update material, ask questions, as well as share resources and links to help guide students as they work their way up Bloom’s pyramid. Each week they will document what they are doing on The Matrix. They will document how they are meeting each criteria, AOI, ATL, as well as citing sources, and linking to material on their blog. Le’s say for example they create a short skit in which they interview a friend about video games. They will link to the video from their blog on the G-doc and mentioned that they were able to understand and respond to questions (Criterion A), they will also begin to explore how what they are doing/learning is connected to AOI and ATL.
We will start with a survey of skills and interests. This will be in a google doc form, but for now here are the questions:
- What do you know a lot about?
- Is there anything about this you don’t know or would like to know more about?
- Is there anything you know very little about, but would like to learn more about?
- What are some things that you think you might do to help you learn more about this topic?
- What do you know how to do well? How did you learn?
- How do you learn best?
- How do you learn something new?
- Is there anything you do not know how to do that you would like to learn?
- What are some things that you think will help you learn how to do this?
- What are some topics you think you are interested in investigating for this unit?
- How will show what you are learning?
- What sources/resources do you think you will need for this unit?
- In this unit, most of the time you will be working and learning independently.
- What kinds of skills do you think you will need to have/use in order to work and learn successfully on your own?
- What organizational tools do I have
- What aspects of my organization do I need to develop?
- How can I best organize myself?
- Communication
- Time Management
- Organization
- using time effectively in class
- keeping to deadlines
- self-management
- goal setting
- organization of learning materials
What communication tools do I use?
- writing
- blogs
- video
- podcast
- oral presentation
- drawings
- charts
- tables
- drama (role play)
- interviews
Which ways of communicating do I need to improve on?
- writing
- blogs
- video
- podcast
- oral presentation
- drawings
- charts
- tables
- drama (role play)
- interviews
After the survey and a review of the logistics and procedures, we will help students develop an investigative question based on any topic they choose. They will begin to gather knowledge, show comprehension, apply it, go through each week exploring Bloom’s Taxonomy. They will use blog posts, videos, podcast, interviews, surveys, anything they can think of to share their learning, while also showing evidence of the five MYP criterion. We hope to connect them with other classrooms as needs arise, or try to find experts in their fields to help them learn beyond a simple wikipedia search.
Well I got the first ideas down. I hope to blog the entire unit, so if this sounds a bit daunting now, stay tuned. But really it is quite simple: I am calling the kids’ bluff. They always claim that school is boring and irrelevant, well now they can choose to learn about anything they want and be assessed by doing whatever they want. We will push them to think deeply about their topics, but it is up to them to really dig deep and learn. I am beyond excited about getting started. I feel this is a huge step in the right direction to a more inquiry based pedagogy. I think once the wrinkles are ironed out this could be a great model. What do think? Suggestions? Ideas? Potential problems? Questions?