The Goals
- Co-constructed Learning between Teacher and Students - achieved by larger groups so I can be more involved in helping to manage the group and give my ideas and contribute.
- Student Choice - Students will choose their area of focus and product that they will produce
- Purpose in outcome - There is real world use for what is created from the unit. If their work is high enough quality it will be used for teaching the social studies curriculum in the next year for the next cohort of students.
The Plan
I am trying to achieve three things to enhance student motivation and engagment in my year 9 Social Studies classes.
- Planning
- Research
- Creating
- Presenting
The Unit is about what skills can be taught so that students can become good citizens. The Social Studies main goal at this campus, which is drawn from the New Zealand Curriculum, is "To develop skills and knowledge to participate as critical, active, informed and responsible citizens."
We are focusing on the skills part. The students will choose a skill to learn about from a class brainstorm. Forming groups to work together. I have 3 classes doing this. I have 4 groups of 5-7 students in one class, 3 groups of 7-9 in a second class, and 2 groups of 11-13 in a third class. It will be interesting to see if my hypothesis of larger but less groups allows for more co-constructed learning and thus enhances engagement.
Research
The Research phase is nothing new to teaching, but I will be directly involved in sharing what I find and helping to get good research with them in real time. We will be using several platforms across the groups for collating research;
- google slides
- hapara workspace
- google docs
We will see what works best.
The outcome of the research phase will be 1-3 learning outcomes for their chosen skill that will be the focus for the creating.
Creating
We will be creating learning modules or unit if you like for next years cohort of year 9 students. Based on the learning outcomes generated from the research. The canvas is wide in what this module could look like as long it meets the learning outcomes. The best learning modules will be used in my curriculum for this unit next year.
Presenting
This phase is where the groups will share what they have created and perhaps have a short activity or chance to do part of the lesson that has been created. I will also be getting feedback from the students on the effectiveness of this research and how they think it went.
I intend to update this post at the end of the unit with what I find out, check back in at the end of October 2015 to see it.