Hamburger Paragraph Tangibles

Project for Tangible & Embodied Learning Technology Module

Summary

Over the course of this 5-week design project, I designed tangible and embodied classroom activities to expand upon the "hamburger" method of paragraph writing. The "paragraph hamburger" is a writing graphic organizer that visually outlines the key components of a paragraph: topic sentence, detail sentences, and closing sentence, each forming a different "ingredient" or layer in the hamburger (example below). In current instruction, the hamburger method in practice is limited to being on a paper, in the form of a worksheet or a printed-out blank graphic organizer. My approach was to make the experience more tangible and embodied so that students can learn how to write a paragraph more effectively (short-term) and develop a deeper understanding for why the components of the paragraph are in the order that they are in - a building block/foundation for more complex writing when they are older (longer-term). I designed a tangibles activity involving toy food to construct a paragraph, and an embodied activity involving students' physical movements and coordination to construct a paragraph.

Goals

The hamburger metaphor, and accompanying visual, is a popular approach that teachers employ to help students organize their ideas into a cohesive paragraph, show the organization or structure of concepts/idea, and demonstrate in a concrete way how information is related. For my tangible and embodied activities, I broken these general learning goals down into more specific layers:

• • First layer: An introduction to parts of a paragraph and how to write a paragraph

  • Second layer: Learn and understand each building block ("ingredients") of paragraph writing

  • Third layer: Be able to write own paragraph using the building blocks correctly

  • Fourth layer: Have someone else read and understand the content of your paragraph

Context & Learners

• Learners - 1st and 2nd grade students in a formal education setting (elementary school)

  • My initial research has shown that the hamburger method can be used anywhere from 1st to even upwards of 5th grade, but seems to be predominantly for 1st - 2nd graders.

  • Generally, this is the age where learners are still learning techniques for structuring their writing, and going from coming up with ideas to writing down the ideas. So an intervention for writing paragraphs would be developmentally appropriate.

• Relevant considerations - For this audience in particular, it will be important for the designed learning interaction/activity to account for some misconceptions or common mistakes that novices might make while writing on their own without the help of a visual or tangible learning aid (i.e., like "overstuffing" the burger with too much content, and not knowing when to stop; or forgetting to transition from topic sentence to detail sentences, etc.)

  • • By allowing learners to encounter misconceptions and work through them, the design will also help learners encode and internalize the important lesson of keeping their writing organized.

I designed two classroom activities for a unit on paragraph writing: a Tangibles Activity, where the technology consists toy food that students manipulate, assemble, and construct; and an Embodied Activity, where the technology is similar to that of a Participatory Simulation in which students negotiate, coordinate, and align their individual behavior in order to foster group-level systems understanding (where the system = a paragraph). All students would get to complete both activities.

Tangibles Activity

2 more challenges follow this one, building more in difficulty and complexity:

• Challenge #2 - Students will have new 5 strips of cut-out paper, each with a sentence already written on it. Students will tape the sentence to the corresponding ingredient. This means they will have to identify which is the topic sentence, which 3 are the detail sentences, and which is the closing sentence.

• Challenge #3 - Student swill have 5 blank strips of cut-out paper, on which they will write own sentences - one sentence per strip of paper. Students will tape the sentence they wrote to the corresponding ingredient. If they did the previous step correctly, this means they will have 1 topic sentence, 3 detail sentences, and 1 closing sentence about a subject of their choice (the teacher may recommend doing it about a book they are reading, or another school subject).

Again, 2 more challenges follow this one, building more in difficulty and complexity:

• Challenge #2 - Each student in the group is given a different order slip, this time with only a sentence written on it. Again, 1 student will get a the topic sentence, 3 students will get detail sentence, and 1 student will get the closing sentences. Students will each read aloud their sentence and will help each other figure out which ingredient their sentence corresponds to, based on what makes the most logical sense in terms of how the ideas fit together to tell a story. Once they determine which ingredient each student has, they will write it on their order slip next to the sentence they were given. Once an order has been determined, they will line up in order and read the paragraph aloud.

• Challenge #3 - Each student in the group is given an order slip with a hamburger ingredient written on it, and a one or two word topic, which will be the same on everyone's order slips. The ingredient written on the order slip will indicate to the student what type of sentence they should write about the given subject. The challenge here is not knowing how to line up, because they all have the ingredients written down already. Instead, the challenge is seeing if the whole paragraph - each student’s sentence put together in order - makes sense when read aloud as a complete paragraph.

Addressing Variation Among Learners

• Positives - Both activities allow for variation in strategy for tackling the challenges. In Challenges #2 and #3 of the Tangibles Activity, for example, some students may immediately start taping sentences to the tangibles, while others may want to makes sure the sentences are in order first, and then tape. There is also room for student choice based on interests. In Challenge #3 of the Embodied Activity, for example, students can write whatever sentence they want, as long as it fits their assigned ingredient type and relates to the given subject (i.e., "facts about the ocean"). In the class discussion following the activities, the teacher would encourage students to talk about what they liked doing best, which might indirectly reveal which of these strategies and choices helped students be successful.

• Shortfalls - More thought needs to be put into how the teacher, or the design features of the activity, could support the learners' metacognitive processes, so they are able to reflect on if a certain strategy or choice helped or did not help them, and why. It might be a bit unrealistic to assume that learners at the 1st or 2nd grade level would be able to reflect like this, even if the teacher explicitly asks them about it during discussion, because they may not possess such metacognitive skills yet. It would be helpful to think of some ways, like feedback systems or guiding questions, that would help learners who are not able to tell if a paragraph is "right" or "wrong" based on the action or strategy they chose to use.

Supporting & Sustaining Engagement

• Positives - The Embodied Activity in particular fosters learner-centered strategy that involves students engaging multiple social and cognitive modalities of learning. Through physical negotiation and coordination with peers, students can start to understand, in an embodied way, how a paragraph starts with separate ideas, requires organization, and once put together in an organized way, the ideas fit together to make sense. In this way, students engage with the activity as actors in a larger system. This level of social and physical organization and coordination involves some trial-and-error, too, which means the activity is not so easy that it can be accomplished quickly.

• Shortfalls - In the Embodied Activity, the level of collaboration and coordination, yet lack of direct instruction, might be difficult for learners in this age range. There may be too much freedom in how they are allowed to coordinate among themselves, and perhaps too much cognitive load induced because they not only have to figure out strategies themselves, but have to communicate them to others and understand others’ strategies, in order to settle on the correct way to line up. The design needs further explanation of how the teacher might be able to help here, because without some sort of added support, the activity might feel too difficult and make learners want to give up.

Expanding the Metaphor - When forming ideas for how the teacher can introduce the topic of hamburger paragraph writing before students engage in the activities, I focused on how the teacher might expand the existing hamburger metaphor so that it has greater context about what it means to connect ideas in a paragraph and communicate those ideas logically to readers, as that is a key learning goal. Expanding upon the metaphor and giving strong examples is how the teacher will frame the activities and prime the learners to physically engage with the hamburger "ingredients." Here are some explanations the teacher could give the students:

• Just how separate ingredients like meat and buns make up a burger, the topic sentence, detail sentences, and closing sentence are the “ingredients” that make up a paragraph

• A chef puts these ingredients together in an order that makes a burger. As a writer, when you put sentences together in order, you get a full paragraph.

• Order and structure is what helps sentences come together to make sense to the reader and to tell a story. Just like eating a burger with one bite of meat, fillings, and buns is better and tastier than eating those ingredients separately.

• To tell if you have your sentences in the right order and that your paragraph makes sense, re-read it yourself, and also have someone else read it. A chef wouldn’t want to send a bad burger out to their customer!

Language Arts Adaptation - Typically, tangibles and manipulatives are learning aids used in math education at the elementary school level. However, I was inspired by Cuisenaire rods for language learning, which is an example I came across in my research on tangibles. They can be used for teaching language and grammar, where the rods can represent parts of speech in a sentence (example below). I have similarly adapted the idea of manipulatives for writing and language arts education, where the hamburger toys become associated with parts of a paragraph.

• "Technology" does not have to always mean "digital" - I was really excited to design a project that involved tangibles because it's so different from my other design work, but I did worry about the lack of digital technology in the environment - no computers or screens or other electronic devices. But for embodied learning, the technology should focus on interactions between the mind and the body, not the mind/body and a screen or a device. To foster embodied cognition, my focus as a designer shifted: instead of designing for interactions between the learner and digital technology, I designed to foster the relationship between a learner's mind and body as they navigate the world and make meaning in their environment - this is where the learning happens.

• Tangibles/manipulatives are more about preparation for future learning - The key purpose of tangible and manipulative learning technology is to help make abstract concepts for realistic for learners. It's a way for young learners, in particular, to start exploring possibilities of a certain task or skill or concept that may have previously seemed too challenging or abstract to understand. While the hamburger tangibles are not something that learners would use past elementary school, the ideas about paragraph writing that it reinforces can and will be referenced and built upon past elementary school.