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| Image from: https://grpopcorn.com/blogs/news/how-is-popcorn-made-a-scientific-look-from-kernel-to-popped-corn |
Our new set up starts this week. What does this mean?
New Schedule
On Tuesday mornings, our new content will be the following:
8:30 AM - How Things Work
10:05 AM - Story Problems Using Realia
11:15 AM - Reader's Sprint & Share
Planning
How did we come up with this content and schedule?
Brainstorming. Discussion. Decision-making. The coming together of our instructional units is a group effort. I know you hear horrible things about committees and meetings. However, in our case, group planning is extremely productive. Group planning allows all of us to engage in the process and be partners, even if the initial idea belonged to someone else. We also discuss which College & Career Readiness (CCR) Standards we'll focus on in each instructional unit. And, more importantly, what our final product will be.
As you can see from the time schedule above, we have set up three instructional units for Tuesday mornings for November & December 2021.
Why in this order?
The question posed was "What will get you up excited to come to class in the morning?" This group agreed whole-heartedly that "How Things Work" would do it.
Execution
Execution is on me. I have to take the content and figure out how to best deliver it for maximum benefit. We talk about the CCR Standards during our planning, but I'm responsible for ensuring that these skills and abilities are effectively integrated into instruction.
How Things Work. This unit is about understanding the mechanics or workings of every day items or things in our lives. We'll look at the operations or science behind six every day "things." Our focus will be on growing vocabulary, taking notes, explaining processes, developing presentation skills, and giving supporting evidence. Each lesson will be delivered via a set of Google slides. These lessons will include both video and written information. Each lesson will end with a short quiz.
Instructional Focus. What "things" will we focus on, you ask? That's still up for debate. I chose the first item. See the photo at the top. We brainstormed several ideas, then I added to them. In the end, I created a survey for the group to score in class this week. The items with the highest numbers will the ones we include.
End Product. Learners will identify how the lessons are being presented. One lesson will be specific about how to make a video. During the course of the two months, learners will each identify one item to explore on their own. We'll end the unit with each learner sharing a self-made video explaining how his/her item works.
Story Problems Using Realia. Realia - objects & materials from everyday life used as teaching aids - was our first vocabulary word in this unit. They asked for "real" story problems linked to "real" situations in their adult lives. Again, we brainstormed possible realia we could use. I put together a survey for them to score at our next lesson. Meanwhile, our first lesson will focus on reading a map and figuring out distances. This realia will be an extension of our previous unit on map reading skills and trip planning.
Instructional Focus. We agreed to focus on identify language that helps you decide which math operations to use, how to turn story problems into equations, how to solve the equations, and how to know if your answer is credible.
End Product. This unit will have a daily win - learn about real math-related items from our daily lives, but no final product for display at the end of this unit.
Reader's Sprint & Share. This unit is instructional in a different way. The sprint part is about reading silently for a given period of time in a book of one's choice.
Instructional Focus. The share part of this sprint focuses on practicing summarizing. Learners write in their notebooks about what they learned during silently reading, then type the summaries into chat to share with us all.
We read aloud our summaries and briefly discuss them. Feedback depends entirely on the content of the summaries. Feedback may be specific about the structure of the summary. Feedback may be a conversation about the details of the summary. Or, feedback may even be questions or further requests for examples supporting the summary's content.
The point here is to use writing to summarize. Then, use oral language to further explore and communicate ideas.
End Product. This unit will have a daily win - develop summarization skills, but no final product for display at the end of this unit.
Next?
What would you do to pull together instruction with an impact on life? Leave comments below.
skrow ti woh - nrocpop si meti yretsym eht
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