Transcript Document

Teaching All Children:
Planning and Assessment
23 February 2010
How should we respond to Diversity?
How can we engage ALL students in learning?
 Select themes or issues of personal and social relevance that provoke
questions that call for investigation
 Choice and ownership lead to commitment
 Open ended questions stimulate inquiry, active exploration, and
discovery.
 Collaboration with others generates more ideas
 Dialogue about results deepens understanding
 Individual representation (writing, diagramming, etc.) encourages
reflection

The Spiral of Learning and
Understanding
Focus on an Improvable Object
Teaching for Understanding
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DINOSAURS SCHOOL…
Baby DINOSAURS Schools were in
VOCKANOS. Eve ry 5 Years The
Fire Drial wo uld Go On as an
ERUPTION. THEY WriHT About People.
THE Paper was 10 mters long. And
The Pencil is 5 mters long. There
Close is poka Doted. And THERE
Poget is about THE Fugter. THE
Librery is called Home read stone.
And The books or made of saled.
Rock. THEY live in haya rock.
THERE Brians or as small as marbells. THERE
LUnCH is Bronto brgers. THERE TOYS
ARE all With batre ries, THERE HOUES is
M ADE OF Pebulls.
by Tony, Tanya, Barbara, M argaret and Er ic.
The Role of the Teacher
The role of the teacher is not to teach per se,
but rather to create situations in which students
learn - in other words, to ‘engineer’ learning
environments.
Wiliam, 2004, p. 1.
The Roles of the Teacher
Students learn best in a receptive, nonjudgmental, community environment
that
 encourages inquiry and independence
 includes a wide variety of materials
 provides opportunities for practical activities
 is generally complex
 connects school experience with the greater world
 encourages collaboration rather than competition
 values extended expression of individual understandings and beliefs
 welcomes the constructive exploration of disagreement
Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence
http://www.crede.ucsc.edu/
Communities of Inquirers/Learners
The emphasis on establishing communities of … practice builds on the fact that
robust knowledge and understandings are socially constructed through talk, activity
and interaction around meaningful problems and tools (Vygotsky, 1978). The teacher
guides and supports students as they explore problems and define questions that are
of interest to them. A community of practice also provides direct cognitive and social
support for the efforts of the group’s individual members. Students share the
responsibility for thinking and doing: they distribute their intellectual activity so that the
burden of managing the whole process does not fall on any one individual. In addition,
a community of practice can be a powerful context for constructing [scientific]
meanings. In challenging one another’s thoughts and beliefs, students must be
explicit about their meanings; they must negotiate conflicts in belief or evidence; and
they must share and synthesize their knowledge to achieve understanding.
(How
People Learn, pp.183-4)
Plan for:
Classroom Meetings
 Negotiation of Themes and Inquiries
 Presentation to Real Audiences
 Reflective Discussion
Learning for Understanding
Understanding
occurs through:
is shown in:
using knowledge to carry out some
new and challenging activity in order
to achieve some desired outcome
in a particular situation.
Generative Topics:
Themes that connect to students’ lives, stimulate
inquiry, provoke discussion.
Goals for Understanding:
“Big ideas”, important concepts, necessary skills,
connections and implications.
Performances of Understanding : Activities that use knowledge for meaningful
purposes, practical and intellectual.
Ongoing Assessment:
Provide criteria, give feedback and support,
encourage reflection.
Summative Assessment:
A ‘performance of understanding’ that requires
students to draw on what they have understood
to meet some new challenge.
(based on Project Zero Framework)
Designing a Curriculum Unit
THEME
(A Way of Orienting Curriculum Content to Students’ Lives and Interests
e.g. Community, Exploration, Water)
“Big Ideas”/”Enduring Understandings”
(see Curriculum Standards)
Activities
(that Allow for Inquiry, Dialogue)
Check with Principles
Launch-----Questions -----Research
Performance of Understanding <---> Assessment
Reflection