Module Three

Envisioning

Setting the most significant learning goals possible so that we teach for the kinds of threshold knowledge that move learners irreversibly through the gateways 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 do we PREPARE FOR SUCCESS by laying the groundwork for an engaging and effective unit of instruction or an instructional sequence within that unit?

Module Checklist (Looking Ahead)

In this module, you will complete the following items:

1 - Priming/Orienting Activity

2 - GEM and GRASP Activities - Post on Padlet

3 - Respond to 3 Padlet Posts

4 - Unit Template Development

5 - Reflective Writing

Priming & Orienting Activity

Write a brief response to the following prompts, to be shared with your mentor:

1) What does it mean to be a "designer" of instructional and learning activity versus a "presenter" of information? How might this notion of "instructional design" affect our planning process?

2) Watch the "Envision your dream students" video and complete the activity.

Afterwards, reflect on and name what you will have to do to help this kind of learning occur. What kinds of activities could you give up that do not serve this envisionment?

Please post your work in your folder in our shared Google Drive.

Envisioning.pptx

Input

Envisioning Video

(For your convenience for review, you can also access this PDF of the slide deck.)

This voiced video and slide deck provides an overview of important principles about envisioning our instructional goals, and making sure that these goals reflect threshold knowledge that is so generative and significant that it is irreversible, unconstrained, and can be extended and revised across a lifetime.

Reading Assignment

Planning Powerful Instruction - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Envisioning the Destination Through Principled Planning Protocols

Activity: GEMS for getting started with Envisioning

Identify the central topic of a unit you will soon teach (this can be a unit you’ve taught many times before, or it can be a unit you want to design from scratch). If you teach literary works or other texts, consider what topics that are of intense interest to your learners are central to these texts. Consider the real world applications and transfer value of the content to be learned. This should help you to identify powerful topic statements that can frame instruction in a way that will be motivating to learners and will highlight transfer.

Next, envision a potential culminating project that would require and reward learners for meeting some of the major conceptual and procedural goals of your unit (MAKE SURE YOU HAVE GOALS FOR TRANSFORMED WAYS OF KNOWING, THINKING, and DOING), as well as existential goals (of transformed ways of BEING in the world). Consider the GEMS Mental Model for helping you crystallize your learning outcomes. Run a GEMS on your proposed culminating project - which should be a usable knowledge artifact that can be shared and can do work in the world.

See this GEMS Planning Sheet.

Turn your GEMS into a GRASP to help make it a real world task with clear transfer value to other real world situations.

Share your work in our Padlet.

NOTE WELL that in this course

YOUR GOAL: To create a guided inquiry unit that exemplifies the processes of cognitive apprenticeship through EMPOWER that will engage and assist all your learners to more expert capacities with threshold knowledge.

YOUR ROLE: You are an instructional designer in the role of a PD presenter

YOUR AUDIENCE: Other teachers eager to learn about how to use cognitive apprenticeship through EMPOWER to reach all learners and help them fully develop actualize their potential.

THE SITUATION: We are teaching in a time of global pandemic and potential future challenges that might require us to teach online or in blended learning environments. We must make the most of all our resources to make sure that learners master what is most important (threshold knowledge) to move them towards expert thinking, knowing, doing and being in our particular discipline.

OUR PRODUCT: An online presentation of your final unit that highlights how major principles of cognitive apprenticeship have been met.

MEASURES OF SUCCESS: for each element of the unit, measures of success are summarized at the end of corresponding chapters from the book.

GEMS Cheatsheet & Worksheet

Transfer of Learning

It is now time to apply your learning to your classroom instruction and unit plan. You may choose to use our unit templates or select a unit template used by your school or district. If you are required to use a particular kind of unit or lesson planning format by your school, see in what ways you can adapt it to make it fit EMPOWER - e.g. Do you need to rename some moves, are there moves missing that you need to fill in, are there moves that don't fit the process of guided inquiry and cognitive apprenticeship? If so, how can you reframe, revise, and tweak required moves to bring them more in-line with EMPOWER and the current research from cognitive science?

If you would like to use one of our unit templates, make a copy of the one that applies to the subject you teach and place it in your folder in our shared Google Drive:

If you are planning to use your own template, create or upload it to your folder in our shared Google Drive

You will want to complete the following EMPOWER components associated with this module in your unit plan:

Standards
Vision and Values
Learning Objectives
Essential Question (We encourage you to brainstorm an essential question to guide your unit now, although you will also revisit this in Module 5.)
Guiding Questions/Subquestions (We encourage you to brainstorm possible guiding questions now, although you will revisit this in Module 5.)
Misconceptions/Evolving Conceptions

Reflective Writing

Compose a one-page response reflecting on the following question:

What is the importance of context and real world “situatedness” (what cognitive scientists call “situated cognition”) to identifying goals with powerful transfer value, a culminating project with real world transfer value, to making instruction “toolish” (real world applications) instead of “schoolish” (doing school)?

Reflect in a Google Document and share it with your mentor by posting it to your folder in our shared Google Drive.

Online Applications, FYI

Bridging the knowledge gap: How knowing and doing and thinking must be taught and learned together WITH CONTENT in a context of use!

Natalie Wexler has done a fine job of summarizing the research findings about how strategic expertise (particuarly as one learns HOW to read) cannot be achieved separate from learning and using content. That's a basic premise behind situated cognition and guided inquiry/apprenticeship approaches. There are many good connections to elementary and teaching reading comprehension. If you or others you know need to be convinced that we cannot teach learners how to read, write, think, problem solve, do science separate from a context of use (e.g. through decontextualized worksheets and the like) then watch this! Click here for a short webinar of hers.

Technology Connections:

What kinds of culminating projects can be designed on a computer or with a phone or other technologies? What kinds of projects can be archived and shared digitally over the internet? How can projects and presentations and other ways of sharing projects be done online in ways that align with real world disciplinary activity?

Online poster sessions and presentations of work are one way. Podcasting as a project, or podcasting throughout a project on how it is going and what is being learned is another way.

Student designed websites, short video documentaries and other knowledge artifacts can both represent learning and/or report on the process of learning. For example, service learning projects could be represented through a short video documentary, and the process of the project could be reported on.

Podcasting:

There are lots of great intros to podcasting, which can be akin to a journal or audio blog. Here's one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCf-dRuI0i4

Screencasting:

Some short takes on creating effective screencasts:

https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/screencast-videos/

Major takeaway we wanted to share with you. Research says keep it short! Effective strategies: Signaling/Segmenting/Weeding and Matching Modality concepts.

https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/effective-educational-videos/

Service Learning:

Service learning projects are often part of guided inquiry approaches - what kinds of service could be done virtually ? (e.g. creating PSAs for distribution or visiting with the elderly?)

Gut Check!

1 - Have you posted your Priming/Orienting responses in your folder?

2 - Have you shared your GEMS and GRASP ideas on our Padlet?

3 - Have you read over and responded to the Padlet responses of two or three fellow participants?

4 - Have you created a copy or uploaded a unit template to your folder and completed the required components?

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!

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