I love that you mentioned that you could do a science experiment with your video. This is a great activity for making predictions and for helping students visualize the content you are teaching them. I see this being a full lesson of just experiments. I wonder what ways we could include students in this experiment so it is more interactive for them. Maybe having small groups partake in safe experiments within the water cycle, and have them report back to the class what they learned.
For our interactive learning resource, our group is planning on doing an Edpuzzle video. This is where you take a video, and provide questions within the video for students to answer. For this video on the water cycle, there are a ton of different questions that could be provided for students to answer. I see our group using a mix of reflective questions and observable questions as interaction with the material (Bates, 2014). This type of activity would be designed because students will not be able to progress in the video without first answering the questions that come prior (Bates, 2014).
Prior to watching the video, we can have students take part in student-student interaction with group discussion in think-pair-share. This way, students will be able to share what they already know about the water cycle and the instructor will learn about any prior knowledge.
After watching the video, students can do an activity to build on the knowledge they just learned. They can draw a picture of what the water cycle means to them, or how water affects their daily lives. Students could also choose to write a small paragraph, create a comic, etc.
The instructor will have all the answers to the Edpuzzles available. This feedback would be given back to each student and will involve any comments from the video. This video is not being used as a summative assessment, so there will be helpful comments and further questions in the assessment. This feedback will be given verbally since they are in grade 2. To save time, teachers can group up students who had similar answers and chat with the group.
Barriers that may be faced with the Edpuzzle are students who are not able to read, students who have hearing loss, students who have visual impairments, and more. To curb these, we would read the question out loud before the question pops up on the screen, make sure closed captions are available, and provide the computer lab for students to complete the activity so they have a larger screen.
Bates, A.W. (2019). Chapter 9. Teaching in a Digital Age – Second Edition. Vancouver, B.C.: Tony Bates Associates Ltd. Retrieved from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/
I like that you mention some students could do a digital format of the water cycle diagram. I wonder what sort of platforms this could be done on? I wonder if there is something online already that could be used for filling out the diagram.
I also wrote about the Edpuzzle in my post. I like that you mentioned that reading and listening to the audio is beneficial to EAL students. I never thought about it this way!
How will your interactive learning resource specifically ensure that the needs of all learners can be met?
In my group’s learning resource, we have chosen two exceptionalities: colourblindness and hard of hearing. Throughout the lesson we will keep these exceptionalities in mind, as well as other ways to make our lesson inclusive in other ways.
In order to make this an inclusive resource for all of our students, we need to think of all of the barriers. Some barriers may be faced in the content we are providing and our assessments.
Kahoot:
Kahoot is a great tool to use in the classroom. Kahoot should not be used as a learning tool, but rather for review and as a fun way to internalize ideas learned throughout lessons. We realize that Kahoot is not always fair, and not all students like competition, so we will make the Kahoot anonymous so that we do not have a podium of students’ names at the end of each round. The kahoot will be presented on the projector, and we will also read out loud each question as they pop up. We will also read each answer out loud. Each answer will have a short sentence answer, as well as a picture.
Edpuzzle:
Edpuzzle is great at considering accessibility. When we create the Edpuzzle, we will record each question so that it plays out loud when the questions pop up on the screen. Additionally, we will create the option to have closed captions when playing the video. We will also give students the option of using speech-to-text when filling out their answers. Each student will be doing the Edpuzzle on their own so we will give each student a set of headphones.
Final assessment:
It is important to include multiple means of action or expression in the classroom, therefore we will include multiple ways to complete the final assessment (Universal Design, n.d). The goal of our summative assessment is to answer the question: What happens when there’s no rain? With this assignment, students will have to present a text to share with everyone in the community. This is a meaningful assignment because it will be constructed with the intention to share it with the larger community. There will be student choice when creating the assessment. Some students may choose to create a comic strip, some may choose to create a poster, some may create a written paragraph, some a video, and so on. We are open to options that the students provide. With whichever form of representation the students choose to complete, we will assess each student with the same learning goal in mind.
Throughout the unit:
Throughout the unit, we will plan our lessons to have teaching cues that allow tasks to be broken up into manageable chunks (Inclusive Learning Design, n.d). This will involve us giving step-to-step instructions for all lessons so that no student is left unsure of what to do. Additionally, we will ensure we are speaking and enunciating loudly so that all students can hear. In anything we present, we will zoom in on what we are teaching so that it is large. We will also print on the board large. We will also recognize when students need brain breaks and do so accordingly, our assessments can be done at a later time if that is the case (Universal Design, n.d).
EdTech Admin. (n.d.). Universal design. EDCI 335: Learning design for technology-mediated environments. Retrieved October 22, 2022, from https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/universal-design/
EdTeach Admin. (n.d.). Inclusive Learning Design. EDCI 335: Learning design for technology-mediated environments. Retrieved October 22, 2022, from https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/inclusive-learning-design/
Hannah, I really connected to your post on Inquiry as it is something we have learned about in the Education program. When I was first learning about inquiry, I was very confused about what it entailed. I love that in your beginning paragraph you narrowed it down to students facilitating their learning with the teacher’s support. This single sentence would have helped me understand it better a couple of years ago.
I connected with your experience of there being a lack of inquiry in your education journey. There was specific content and we were to always report on this content, not from our own particular interests.
After reading your post, I realized that recess is a great inquiry opportunity for students. Students will often play with nature they find outside such as twigs and sticks and use their imagination to take part in play-based inquiry. It makes me wonder how we can incorporate play-based inquiry into the classroom as well so that we can maximize students’ indepdence.
The instructional approach that I inquired about is open pedagogies. According to KPU, open pedagogies is committed to helping students access open resources, and helps students use these open resources to create content (KPU, n.d.). After researching this instructional approach, I realized that open pedagogies are a lot more accessible to the Elementary classroom than I anticipated. Before reading, my knowledge of using open resources was mainly skewed toward academic articles, although there is a whole range of open resources such as Youtube, Google Drive, and more (IA State, n.d.).
My Pod group is entirely elementary education students, so when researching open pedagogies I had this focus in mind throughout. Open pedagogies can look like a lot of things such as co-creating policies with students, creating meaningful assignments, and using open resources (KPU, n.d.).
Co-Creation: Our group is doing our interactive learning design on the water cycle. Due to the nature of this course, we cannot co-create policies, rubrics, and schedules with our students because we are not working with our target group for this assignment (KPU, n.d.). However, if we were to take this topic and use it in our future classes, we could definitely apply these ideas. It is often talked about in the education field to create rubrics with our students so that they have more autonomy and understanding of assignments.
Meaningful Assignments: KPU mentions that in open pedagogies, students should be creating projects that have a larger impact than just in the classroom (KPU, n.d.). IA State also mentions that a great way to do this is by collaborating as a class to create a textbook (IA State, n.d.). Our target students are in grade 2, so creating a textbook might be a little challenging. However, we could have students collaborate to create a collage of ideas they have learned. To go even further, students could then share this collage by presenting it to another group, creating a video of a puppet show, or putting it out on a bulletin board for others to see. This way, students are able to share what they have learned. Another way that we could incorporate this into our learning design is by having students write a letter or draw a picture about water conservancy for the local council.
Using Open Resources One of the main parts of using open pedagogies is having students use open education resources so that they learn how to be a part of an online community (IA State, n.d.). In connection to creating meaningful assignments, when students use and contribute to the public good, students learn how to be a part of the public in a relevant way (IA State, n.d.). If you search on Youtube ‘The Water Cycle,’ there are a ton of videos created by hundreds of people that can contribute to the learning of students. Additionally, there are open resources students can use to store their files such as google drive. For the interactive learning design, students could use spaces such as google drive to store and share their work with other peers, and even the public.
Essentially, using open pedagogy can be a series of practice, learning style, or state of mind (IA State, n.d.). Educators can decide how they want to incorporate this instructional approach into their teachings, and whether this is something they feel students should be assimilating into their learning path. As we dive more into the technology generation, it is important to consider the prospect of open pedagogies and how this type of instruction can change the way technology is used in society.
Here is an example of an open ed resource on the water cycle:
References
Open Pedagogy. (n.d.). Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Retrieved Oct 5, 2022, from https://www.kpu.ca/open/pedagogy
Open Pedagogy. (n.d.). Iowa State University. Retrieved Oct 5, 2022, from https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit/chapter/open-pedagogy/
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