Diving deeper into Fullan and Langworthy‘s readings this week (2014), the parts that again resonated with me are those of voice, choice and ownership in learning. How do you involve students in the process of learning? This made me think of our current unit of inquiry, “How we express ourselves”. After the initial provocation of looking at a variety of creators’ messages composed in different media, we came together as teachers and synthesized what our learners were telling us in terms of their prior knowledge. After listening to our learners’ voices and prior knowledge from the provocation, as teachers, we were able to construct lines of inquiry (and more) to meet learners where they were at To simplify this post, we’ll fast forward a few weeks of learning. Through learning engagements (and even a guest storyteller from Australia), students developed a better understanding of audience, communication skills, and how our audience influences the way we communicate (i.e. our central idea). It was now time to think about the summative task that would empower students to showcase their newfound knowledge. What our learners were telling us Quite a few of our students, through regular student voice surveys, had advocated that it would be “cool” to do a talent show. This little nugget of data was the catalyst to the summative task – “Studio 4’s Got Talent”! Together, with the students, we looked at the unit, reviewed the key learning, and then co-constructed a GRASPS statement (McTighe and Wiggins, 2010) together. Here are some of the ways, by incorporating the voices of the learners, we’ve embedded ample choice into this task:
Engaged or Empowered? Our talent show is this coming week. Students are engaged as they know the pathways to success well. As Hattie (2012; in Fullan and Langworthy, 2014) posits… Because the task is super rich in agency (voice, choice and ownership) right down to the success criteria, kids are not only engaged — they’re empowered. The submission medium – Flipgrid Our current context is home-based learning. We chose Flipgrid as our submission medium as it deepens the learning, digitally, in many ways:
The assessment This, the students will own, too. Simple statements and reflections stemming from the success criteria that we co-constructed. Success criteria that they’ve known for weeks and have multiple experiences and practices so that every learner can be successful. Here is a modelled example of what this will look like, along with the student response sheet, which students can respond using text, voice or video in their Seesaw portfolio: Questions to ponder for you, dear reader…
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