Monday, February 27, 2017

Front-ending sounds more positive!




  
Teachers are designers. An essential act of our profession is the design of curriculum and learning experiences to meet specified purposes. We are also designers of assessments to diagnose student needs to guide our teaching and to enable us, our students, and others (parents and administrators) to determine whether our goals have been achieved, that is, did the students learn and understand the desired knowledge?
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe


Understanding by Design, backward design!

In recent years the area of designing curriculum has become of prime importance in schools. This is particularly critical as schools begin to become familiar with and deconstruct the Australian Curriculum for the purpose of designing appropriate learning and teaching program for their students. The theory which has been adopted as the way to go is from the work of Wiggins and McTighe in the area of Backward Design. Everywhere one goes, where curriculum is being developed and implemented we hear the term UBD or rather Understanding By Design.

Backward Design planning is a rather logical and reasonable idea which has always been the way of operation for many teachers, but not all.

By clearly articulating the UBD process, Wiggins and McTighe have created a way of thinking which has had great penetration into the area of curriculum planning and in turn pedagogy.

A few observations and gems of comment from the readings on Wiggins and McTighe

• Teachers are designers.

• "Clarifying the desired results of our teaching, how will we ever know whether our designs are appropriate or arbitrary?"

• How will we distinguish merely interesting learning from effective learning?

• Good design, … is about learning to be more thoughtful and specific about our purposes and what they imply.

• The shift involves thinking a great deal, first, about the specific learnings sought, and the evidence of such learning, before thinking about what we as the teacher, will do or provide in teaching and learning activities.

• "The challenge is to focus first on the desired learnings from which appropriate teaching will logically follow."

• “...best designs derive backward from the learnings sought.”

• “...too many teachers focus on the teaching and not the learning.”

• Content focused design versus results focused design.

• Answering the "why?" and "so what?" questions as the focus of curriculum planning.

• Twin sins:
* activity-oriented design might be called "hands-on without being minds-on" primary-middle years)
* aimless coverage (upper secondary)

• Students require clear purposes and explicit performance goals.

• Grasp the key idea that we are not coaches of their ability to play the "game" or performing with understanding, not tellers of our understanding to them on the sidelines.

• Three stages of Backward Design = Identify desired result - Determine acceptable evidence - Plan learning experience and instruction.


A related reading on progression was also set for this week’s workshop. Here are some comments from the work of Hoodless: Planning for progression and opportunities for the development of key skills

• Long, medium and short term planning.

• Australian curriculum is taking care of the long term planning?

• Key questions to draw together medium term planning.

 “...link the skills. concepts and factual content together around a central question, which is likely to interest the children.”

• “Short-term planning refers to the planning of individual lessons by the class teacher.”

• “Objectives, often expressed as key questions, are the knowledge, skills or understanding which you will want the children to have learned by the end of the lesson'

• Planning process = Previous knowledge and understanding - Specific learning intentions - Planned learning experience.

 "Hierarchy of thinking skills, which interact with language, and also depend on maturation; learning is seen as a developmental process."

• The thinking skills listed:
* Information processing
* Reasoning
* Inquiry
* Creative thinking
* Evaluation

Curriculum Making


Image above: The Geography Association in the UK. An amazing resource and the leaders in the concept of curriculum making.


Related sites to Humsteach blog
Spatialworlds
Australian Curriculum Portal
Geogaction
DECD Learning Resources for Australian Curriculum
DECD Achievement Standards Charts 
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website

Geography Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of Australia 

Scoop.it 

malcolm.mcinerney@flinders.edu.au    

 

What do you think and what will your students think about ....?


Use the Stawpoll site to create a poll and then answer the following by clicking on the url.



Answer hte following question by clicking on the url under each of the following 3  questions:

1. The Bali 9 prisoners should have been executed


2. I find education theory really ...

http://strawpoll.me/3843034 

3. The thought of teaching my first class by myself ...



Curriculum Making

What is curriculum making?

Curriculum making is the creative act of interpreting a curriculum specification or scheme of work and turning it into a coherent, challenging, engaging and enjoyable scheme of work.
Curriculum making is a job that really never ends and lies at the heart of good teaching.
When educators talk about curriculum making we refer to the creation of interesting, engaging and challenging educational encounters which draw upon teacher knowledge and skills, the experiences of students and the valuable subject resources of the subject. Curriculum making is concerned with holding all this in balance and as a teacher you play a key role.

Why curriculum making? 
The potential and promise of a subject is compromised if it is seen only as an inert or static 'knowledge-to-be-delivered'. Covering the syllabus is just the mechanics of teaching and is not the same as making the curriculum.
Curriculum making is about bringing a curriculum alive. It is about enacting the curriculum and giving it purpose. Geography and history are resources that can enable students to better understand the world and their place in it. It aims for a deep understanding.
The inquiry-led approach lies at the heart of teaching and learning in the Australian Curriculum: geography and History. Humanities teachers perform a delicate balancing act, drawing upon the student's experiences, the subject resource and their own knowledge and craft skills.

The essence of curriculum making 
The following diagram captures the essence of curriculum making. Think of the diagram as a kind of 'corrective', always aiming for somewhere in the middle. Engage with the subject, listen to your students and question the value of what you are teaching.


Diagram from the Geography Association UK

The inquiry approach contains four central aspects including the creation of a 'need to know' through the use of an engaging stimulus. It then develops through the collection and use of data, processing and making sense of that data and finally reflecting on learning in order to apply it to future enquiries.
This process has been captured in a single diagram (adapted from Roberts, 2003).





What is Powerful Knowledge? Check out what Michael Young says about the importance of discipline knowledge.

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

HaSS SA Conference



Image above: A fantasy front page!!


The HaSS SA Conference was held at Uni SA (Magill Campus) on 25 February, 2017. Here are some of the presentations from the day.

The Place of HaSS in the Curriculum keynote


Let's be Civil workshop


Thinking HaSS workshop




Some useful HaSS links

Spatialworlds
GeogSpace
AC History Units
Geogaction
DECD Learning Resources for Australian Curriculum
DECD Achievement Standards Charts 
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website

Geography Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of Australia
Legal Education Teachers Association SA (LETASA)
Business Educators Australia

Email contact:
malcolm.mcinerney@sa.gov.au


* The Australian Curriculum Portal




A selection of HASS resources and links

 Being a Citizen: a resource for Civics and Citizenship programming



 South Australian Parliament teaching resources



* The role of juries eBook (DECD Outreach Education)



* Suffragettes site (DECD Outreach Education)


Discovering Democracy resources 

* Parliamentary Education Office resources





AC History Units: the resource from HTAA and Education Services Australia (ESA) to support the Australian Curriculum: History





* DECD Australian Curriculum: HASS resources 

The DECD "Making the Australian Curriculum work for us' resource has been designed  to support the teaching and learning of the Australian Curriculum: HASS.

As you can see below the resource to date includes a creative animation, broadsheets on the curriculum, sound bites and 'talking heads'.

The Story of the learning areas animation. An excellent animation on 'What is Geography for'



The HaSS curriculum, year by year, all on one page in the Learning Area Explorer.





Achievement Standards Charts and activities (soon to be updated for HaSS F-7)



* The RSLSA Virtual War Memorial

A great resource for commemoration activities, historical research and work on Australian identity in the Civics and Citizenship curriculum.




* Changing Worlds: The South Australian Story (DECD Outreach Education resource)


 
* South Australian Aboriginal Cultural Studies Curriculum
http://dlb.sa.edu.au/tlsmoodle/
Click on ACS Aboriginal Cultural Studies course and then in the next screen,
enter password in reverse as mentioned.

* DECD Outreach Education



Some other useful DECD Outreach Education resources for the teaching of HaSS

Muslim Cameleers website: (South Australian Museum)




Curator’s Table: German migrants experiences in Australia during World War I web based resource:




iPad inquiry trails to be undertaken on site at the South Australian Maritime Museum: