Module Four
Mapping
Planning a sequence of learning activities to take students from where they are now to where they need to be as they move along the correspondence continuum towards expertise!
Essential Question for the Course: How can we most effectively teach learners for deep engagement, joy, and expertise that can be developed and refined throughout a lifetime?
Culminating Project: Throughout this course you will be designing a unit outline and five fleshed out lessons. In Module 7 you will be creating an online presentation of your unit.
Guiding Question for the Module
How can we best prepare for planning student-facing instructional sequences that will lead to deep engagement and the development of powerful new capacities?
Module Checklist (Looking Ahead)
In this module, you will complete the following items:
1 - Priming/Orienting Response Activity
2 - Mapping Moves (Access, Regress, Compress, Assess) Responses on Padlet, along with current state of the unit canvas
3 - Respond to 3 Padlet Posts
4 - Unit Template Development
5 - Reflective Writing
Priming & Orienting Activity
Think of a time when you had to do backwards planning in your own life in order to meet some kind of complex goal or complete a complex task. Perhaps you wanted to buy a house, or move from one city and house to a new place and home, start a business, cook a complex meal for twenty guests, or plan for retirement. Maybe you wanted to build a chicken coop or plan a big celebration like a wedding.
How did you plan with the end in mind, starting with that end, identifying and thinking through all the steps that would be required to arrive at your destination?
Stop, Think, and Write: Name the experience and describe how it went for you, naming successes and challenges along the way, what resources helped you to be successful, what you wish you had known beforehand, etc.
Then reflect more generally: What do you have to do to effectively plan to do anything complex in a way that will help you cover all the bases? How could you "map out" and monitor what needs to be done? What strategies can you employ to make sure that you don't forget anything important as you plan things out?
Explain your process in a Google Document, share with your mentor and add it to your folder in our shared Google Drive.
Mapping for EMPOWERed teaching.pptxInput
(For your convenience for review, you can also access this PDF of the slide deck.)
This voiced slide deck reviews important principles, central processes, and tools for mapping out an instructional plan that is focused - like a laser - on learners achieving major threshold knowledge goals.
Or you can watch this live webinar recording of both Envisioning and Mapping that goes a bit deeper:
Reading Assignment
Planning Powerful Instruction - Chapter 5
Chapter 5: Mapping the Path to Mastery Through Task Deconstruction
Activity
Go through all four of the mapping tools for your unit’s culminating project: ACCESS, REGRESS, COMPRESS and ASSESS. (You have already made a pass at REGRESS and COMPRESS in Module Two, when you went through a process analysis of your culminating task and tried to come up with a mental model and map for completing it - so you are already on your way!) These four tools will reinforce each other, and each of them will help you refine your mental model (COMPRESS) and what critical standards are most important to teach, to assess and provide feedback on (ASSESS).
For REGRESS you can revise and build on the process analysis you did in Module One (if that task remains your culminating project). For COMPRESS, you can revise and build on the mental model draft you tried out in the first module (if that task remains your culminating project). We’ll be returning to the process of compressing into a mental model throughout the unit design process.
DON'T OBSESS (ha ha)! - brainstorm and do the best you can - we will be refining these ideas as we go through the course.
As we like to say at BSWP:
Here's to the compost; Here's to the SH--!
Here's to the garden that will grow out of it!
Share your COMPRESS and REGRESS updates, and your ACCESS and ASSESS thinking and the current state of your unit canvas/template on our Padlet. You've got options... you could create a video in Padlet. If you have an electronic version of your thinking, you can create a Loom or some other screen capture and explain the thinking behind it to us. If you do a screen capture, please put a shareable link in our Padlet. Post any question or concerns in your Padlet response as well.
Check out some of your classmates' thinking and use the comment tool to let them know what you think about their mapping skills! Please respond to at least 3 people.
Transfer of Learning
Navigate to your folder in our shared Google Drive and open your unit template.
You will want to complete the following components associated with this module on your overall unit plan template - you will be updating this with each and every module so we all can see how your unit is evolving as you layer in new essential pieces:
Culminating Project
Post the current version of your unit plan template in your folder. You'll also be sharing it again with others in our Padlets at various points during the course.
Reflective Writing
Compose a one-page response reflecting on the following questions:
How do the mapping activities in this chapter mirror what we have learned about transformational teaching, about cognitive apprenticeship and pedagogical content knowledge (knowing HOW to teach learners HOW to do something new and complex, considered to be the hallmark of teacher expertise), and the role of a teacher in developing learner expertise?
Also consider: How are the four mapping processes complementary? In particular, how does having an articulated mental model of the final task (or sub-tasks and processes to be learned in the unit) help you to access the task from a learner's point of view, to regress or deconstruct how the task can be fruitfully pursued, and to think about the most significant critical standards for assessment?
Reflect in a Google Document and share it with your mentor by posting it to your folder in our shared Google Drive.
Online Applications
For those with interest, culturally responsive teaching is an important element of our EMPOWER and guided inquiry/cognitive apprenticeship approach. Here is a longish and new video about how to build Equity-Minded & Culturally-Affirming Teaching Practices in Virtual Learning Communities
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMrf_MC5COk&feature=youtu.be
See if you can find mental models and maps online that would assist you with creating a mental model for major processes and tasks for this unit. What tools can help you represent these models/maps to student digitally, or through posters, etc.?
Thinking Maps https://www.thinkingmaps.com/why-thinking-maps-2/
are a way to map our plans and processes and also to display different kinds of thought patterns and mental models
There are many kinds of mapping software, and many allow teachers to collaborate with each other or with students.
There are likewise many rubric making sites - or you can create your own rubric templates in ways that will allow you to collaborate with other teachers or your learners. These rubrics - or other assessment formats like dual grading charts, primary trait scoring guides, checklists or criteria sheets - can be revised as you go through the unit and more is learned about what makes a quality culminating project.
Here's some information about the single-point rubric from Cult of Pedagogy that might be helpful: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/single-point-rubric/
8 big assessment ideas.pptxSupplementary Materials: Optional Personal or PLC Activity
To begin thinking about ongoing formative assessment of the major types of threshold knowledge (concepts and procedures) you focus on in your unit, see this Assessment slide deck. The deck provides discussion prompts for thinking partners or a PLC to think through whether they are making the 8 new major moves for assessment suggested by cognitive science.
Gut Check!
1- Have you shared your Priming/Orienting response in your folder?
2 - Have you shared a summary of the 4 Mapping Moves you made to plan out the path to the culminating project on our Padlet? Shared the current state of your unit?
3 - Have you responded to the Padlet responses of three (hopefully) new participants in the course?
4 - Have you completed the required components of your unit template?
5 - Have you completed your post-module reflective writing and added it to your folder?
Email your instructor/thinking partner when you are done with this module so that you can get timely feedback!