Learning Design
Preparing lessons focused on competencies allows teachers to design with the end in mind as they integrate content and process skills, develop student-centered learning targets, and frame assessments and follow-up steps to guide the student learning process.
Work Samples
Key questions in backward design and student-centered learning include
What do we want students to know (skill, competency, and standard)?
How will we know if they learn it?
What will we do if they do? or don't?
I designed this learning experience so that students could guide their own learning and connect real-life experience with classroom content and develop competencies such as learning interdependently, sustaining wellness for them and natural systems over time, and reasoning about connections.
EXPERIMENTS IN THE FIELD OR LAB BUILD AGENCY WHEN STUDENTS:
PREDICT AND HYPOTHESIZE
CONNECT BIG IDEAS IN SYSTEMS
DETERMINE IMPORTANCE OF TASKS
QUESTION
IMAGINE
I designed this learning experience to help students expand their understanding of ocean systems and challenge their beliefs about sharks and recognize the impermanence of reefs without action. Providing multiple avenues of choice allowed students to select learning experiences that spoke to their interests.
PROJECT-BASED LEARNING BUILDS CONNECTIONS WHEN STUDENTS:
VISUALIZE PATTERNS
CONNECT AND RELATE
PREDICT AND HYPOTHESIZE
CONNECT BIG IDEAS IN SYSTEMS
DETERMINE IMPORTANCE OF TASKS
I created these maps for each unit to help students ask big questions, make connections, and visualize the learning as they read and took notes. While this is traditional, it deepened the learning for many and built understanding of a tool for critical thinking about connections.
SIMPLE TECHNIQUES LIKE CONCEPT MAPS BUILD UNDERSTANDING WHEN STUDENTS:
VISUALIZE PATTERNS
CONNECT AND RELATE
PLAN
ADJUST
Framework to Build Student Agency
"Perhaps the most important difference of all between standards-based learning and competency-based learning is the commitment to the student."
- Chris Sturgis of CompetencyWorks