I took my district-supplied unit curriculum for To Kill A Mockingbird and redesigned it to incorporate technology as well as to reflect the principles of Universal Design for Learning.
The lessons in this unit were designed for high school freshmen in a school that had extremely limited access to technology. Since the our district generally has vast inequalities in technology access and acquisition, our curriculum generally uses little to no technology, particularly by the students. One of the key ways that I changed this curriculum to incorporate multiple means of engagement was to foster collaboration by placing students into groups, within their groups students were allowed to make their own decisions about whether they wanted to divide up the work or work together on the research. Students were put into assigned groups and given topics and associated resources that were in their zone of proximal development to give students an appropriate level of challenge while still promoting student effort. Another way that I incorporated more engagement as well as technology was by providing regular checks for understanding and collecting feedback via Kahoot, Google forms and plickers. |
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Evidence of teaching and learning procedures that are meaningfully supported with relevant (clearly labeled or distinguished) learner-centered principles from all 4 of the domains and candidate reflects on how the teaching and learning activities respond to the needs of the whole person/cura personalis.
In addition, I did a redesign of one of the lessons in our Unbroken unit. As part of this redesign, I applied the learner-centered principles from all four domains. In part, I made these changes in order to better suit the needs of my students as individuals, not just as data points or to teach to some perceived average student. One way that I did this was by focusing on cognitive and metacognitive factors. The first thing I did was to change their drill to one that better activated their prior knowledge. This supported students activating their existing knowledge in preparation for linking it to new knowledge in a meaningful way (LCP 3). |
Throughout my internship, it was difficult for me to use technology to allow my students to communicate with people outside of our school due to both a lack of technology in my school and the robust filtering and blocking software that our district uses. As a consequence, I had to be creative about how we used technology to connect with our community both within and without of our school.
In general, I did this via students' interviewing people in their community and reflecting on what they learned. One such project was about the American Dream. Students had to define the American Dream based on the details and videos covered in class, but then they also had to interview two people in two different generations and find out how those people viewed the American Dream. Another project we did in the Fall of 2017. Students were reading A Raisin in the Sun and had been having trouble connecting housing segregation to their own experiences and/or lives. After reading the first act of the play, we discussed redlining and housing segregation. Then students had to read excerpts from a book about the redlining of Baltimore, Not in My Neighborhood. Students had to analyze these excerpts and be able to identify connections between the excerpts and their own lives. Finally, we had the opportunity to take two different field trips. Students had to attend at least one of them. One was a visit to the "UnDesigning the Redline" exhibit which was currently in Baltimore. It specifically talked about the ongoing impacts of redlining as well as the historical justifications and actions. The second field trip was to the Maryland Historical Society where they were able to read and view original source documents and maps--including the infamous housing covenants that were in place in Baltimore. Several of these exhibits also had multi-media components and students were able to interview the staff for further information. Students then had to synthesize all these different sources and create a multi-media project that answered the following questions:
While this experience was designed to be a project-based learning opportunity for my students, it was also a PBL for me. I desperately wanted to give my students opportunities to learn and experience information on their own and be able to experience a greater variety of opportunities, experiences and people. However, I found myself experiencing the same growth and exposure. I found myself relying heavily on the Teacher's Democracy Project who have an excellent curriculum on segregation in Baltimore, as well as reaching out to different organizations and individuals for both experiences and financial support to make this happen for my students. To this day, this is one of the best teaching projects I have undertaken. |
The American Dream Project by on Scribd Desegregation PBL Assignmen... by on Scribd |