Sometimes, it doesn’t work out to do a collaborative curriculum meeting. This recently occurred with one of our grade levels, so there is still time this year to do ICL integration for their unit on ecosystems. I reminded myself that I can still support learning by using our curriculum mapping tool (Mangebac) to offer ideas for next year. Both my wife, a librarian and GATE coordinator, and I used to do this during our days in Hong Kong with our in-house curriculum planning tool (dragonet).
As we end this year, I am also reflecting on how I can better support our teachers and, ultimately, the students. Next year, I plan to go into Managebac to review the unit a couple of weeks before each grade-level planning meeting. I will post ideas organized in the content, process, and product differentiation framework. This blended integration technique will allow each grade level team to see some starter ideas ahead of the meeting, which should lead to more efficient use of time when we meet in person. It would be a blended model if curriculum collaboration team members offered ideas and built off one another’s ideas in Managbec before the meeting.
In the cases when we are rewriting units, I will work in person as a co-designer to develop the learning goals, assessments, and learning activities. We will have a full day and coverage to design new units.
What did I come up with for the ecosystem unit we did not meet? Here is my quick once-over looking at what the teachers did this year. I found a listing of learning activities and assessments that I responded to. I could contact my PLN and find other ways to approach the below strategies.
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ICL Possibilities for Next Year’s Ecosystem Unit: Here are a few ideas listing some tools and strategies that might replace, amplify or transform the learning opportunities for your students. As I only have what is listed here in Mangebac, I have limited depth of understanding, so these ideas are just places to start a discussion for planning in the future. -DC
Reading Response Questions to A Book on the Chesapeake Bay– There are a few possibilities here to make the workflow more efficient than using paper and pencil or a Word document. If this is more of a formative assessment where you want students to learn from each other, you could use the forum feature in Moodle to have a threaded discussion. Another choice would be to create a Padlet (www.padlet.com) online “post-it” note board where students post their responses while seeing what their classmates write. They can then be challenged to connect to a certain number of posts by adding what new thinking comes into their minds. If you aim to get individual responses, you could use Google Docs and have the students share their work on your Drive.
Field Trip to Chesapeake Bay Study Station– While there is concern about students handling iPads and cameras in a water-rich environment, there are ways to document the trip with images, voice recording, and video. We could brainstorm possibilities, with a few options, is having a couple of the adults handling the hardware to record media, maybe designating one or two students from each class to take turns in the role of “reporter,” or having teachers or parents or the LTC handle the recording. Upon returning to school with all of the digital media, the door is wide open for students to use technology to be creative in making their thinking visible about what they learned from the field trip. Possible options are: create a virtual exhibit, a podcast with or without images, a documentary, a newscast, a commercial, etc. For more information on field trips, review the Pedagogy & ICL section of the library website. (http://pslibrary.wis.edu/for-teachers/pedagogy-icl)
Poster on an Organism in the Watershed– the students could create an online digital poster using a Web 2 tool like Glogster or do a slideshow using text, images, and language with Voicethread. This offers the opportunity to share with a larger audience and to get feedback using the comment feature. Glogster transforms the project by allowing students to embed text, images, videos, and links to online resources.
Persuasive Letter to Congress about Protecting the Watershed– the students could do a transfer task by taking the content of their letters to create then commercials to make their argument using a screencasting app on the iPad. They would still use their writing but engage their media, visual, and technology literacies.
Brochure on a Biome– if they are not already using Pages or Word, the students could go digital instead of paper and pencil. An extension for differentiation could be to offer some students the option of creating a website. Like some of the other mentioned tools, a website offers students more opportunities to find information that can be inserted into the product. And just as with a brochure, they still use their design skills and can reach a wider audience.
Graphic Organizer to Organize Animals into Ecosystems to Name the Biome– if you are not using Inspiration, it could be used in this assessment. A template with images of all the animals could be saved on Moodle or the library website for easy download to each student’s laptop. When they complete the grouping of animals process, they can export the Inspiration file or take a screenshot to send to the teacher. They could e-mail, upload to Moodle or add the file to their Google Drive to share with the teacher. An extension activity could be to have students embed voice files into each group of animals where they explain in language their reasons for how they grouped them. If students demonstrate their understanding of some connections between groups, they can use the connector tool, which has a labeled text box where they can type in their reasoning for the connection.