Ian Mitchell
A. HIGHLIGHTING THE TOPICS OR BIG IDEAS AND THE STRUCTURE OF THESE IN A UNIT
1. Using and reusing a title page of topics to link lessons
Students commonly see lessons /activities as relatively isolated, unconnected events. The ability to create electronic pages with live links to other pages can help address this and give students a greater sense of both coherence and of progress. Rebecca Robins of the LIG creates a title page for each unit with what she calls chapters linking to different topics in her unit and she builds these chapters as electronic resources for her students before and during the unit. Each lesson begins from the title page so students can see where the topic of the day fits with what has gone before and maintain a big picture of what they are learning. The title page with chapter headings is also used as a template for (later) students brainstorming all they can recall about what they have learnt.
2. Using and re-using a map of the big ideas to link and give purpose to activities
This tackles the same problem as the above use, but extends this by getting students to reflect on the big ideas within a topic. In recent years I have become increasingly aware of the value of teachers taking the time to decide on what they see as the big ideas in a topic and how they will frame these. Commonly there is .a hierarchy of ideas with some bigger ideas subsuming several others. In The role of big ideas in teaching and learning I defined big ideas as ones that linked a range of activities, giving them purpose in terms of those ideas. Coastlines is a topic; one big idea associated with Coastlines is that their current form is an outcome of land movements and forces of erosion that can be faster than erosion in other landforms. It would be easy to structure construct electronic resources or records of units, similar to what Rebecca Robins did, that link different activities to a (small) number of big ideas âa teacher could ask students to start making these links as a way of debriefing activities, or ask them to add notes saying why and how an activity was linked to a particular idea.
Adam Surmacz (Mapping Learning) identified three broad fields when he was teaching science: Matter, Space and Living Things. Every couple of weeks he had his (grade1 &2) students use Inspiration to build up, extend and, where needed, rearrange a mind map âwith three main branches, that organised what they had learnt and linked these ideas to the relevant classroom activities.
3. Students look for examples of key ideas
Lara Laverman in Collaborative work on the interactive whiteboard (PEEL SEEDS 102) showed students some video footage and asked the students to identify an idea they were focusing on in the footage. In this case the idea was arrays and the footage was Scooby Doo âwhere the students found numerous examples. Screen captures were taken and added to their site on arrays along with comments from the students as to why they thought this was an array. Then Lara had the students walk around outside and find more examples of arrays, they did not add images of these onto their site, but they could have. I can think of lots of examples where this could be done âlooking for examples of the big idea that the structure of features of living things (such as animal feet) flows from the function that the living thing needs (e.g. running. climbing, perching, swimming). This clearly has the potential to build a sense of shared ownership as well as richer meanings for the idea.
Ten journeys of change
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Journey |
Metacognitive knowledge |
Metacognitive control |
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1. Using Good Learning Behaviours |
Knowing about a range of GLBs |
Chooses to display particular GLBs as appropriate |
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2. Building understanding and use of teaching procedures. |
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Understands and displays the particular aspects of thinking/ learning behaviours intended by the procedures at hand and links these to the content at hand |
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3. Building a shared language for learning |
Knowledge of 1 & 2 as well as other terms useful for thinking about learning |
Can identify and articulate how they learnt how they are learning and how they could learn better. |
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4. Reflection -ability and willingness to reflect about what and how they learned including any changes to their thinking in either of these areas. |
A sense of purposeful intellectual engagement versus mere busy work; an understanding of different aspects of reflection
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Aware of whether or not they have an understanding of the key ideas of a lesson or topic and hence of when and what they need help on. Uses reflection to makes changes to how they will operate in the future. |
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5. Building understandings and skills of collaboration/co-operation as well as trusts. |
Knowledge of what good collaborative behaviours can be |
Can identify weaknesses and suggest changes to improve collaboration in their group |
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6. Shifts in perceptions of roles of teacher and student |
Understanding that, and how, the roles of students and teachers change in classrooms that focus on quality learning |
Takes more responsibility for their own learning; uses the teacher as a resource and facilitator rather than as the source of all knowledge and control of classroom agendas. |
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7. Understanding the teacher's purposes and long term agendas. |
Understands the kind of learning community the teacher is trying to build as well as the value in this. Understanding of why a teacher may use behaviours such as wait time or delayed judgement or why they have selected a particular procedure. |
Works in ways consistent with the teacher's long term agendas; offers suggestions for what should be the lesson agendas and direction and how these might be better met. |
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8. Building understanding that classroom tasks should always be linked to the relevant big ideas and key skills |
Understands that there are big ideas and/or key skills that the teachers intends that they learn as well as an understanding of what the current ones are |
Willing and able to reflect on links between tasks and big ideas
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9. Active monitoring before the task and during the task, about what they will do/are doing and links to purpose and key ideas and skills, |
Knowledge of the sorts of self questions associated with active monitoring. Understands the value in pro-actively doing this. |
Focuses on building understandings and skills, not just on completing tasks. Better able to inform the teacher of the sorts of assistance they need. |
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10. Increased decision-making and independence.
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Understands the kinds of decisions they can and should make in different situations. |
Displays informed and independent decision making. Has a higher capacity to get unstuck and address other problems of learning. Evaluates what they are doing or have done and whether or not this needs to change. Decides when and how to seek help |