Pedagogy Map
A pedagogy map! Could there really be such a thing? A secret document that holds the key to the art and science of what I will do in the classroom? I saw a movie once with a call to arms line of ‘if you build it they will come’. So here I go……I will build it, and I really hope the higher learning comes. I began with the Humanities and Social Sciences learning area of the Australian Curriculum. I cannot sing the praises of this area enough. I love everything about the social sciences. I love the humanities. I love social justice and I love the thought of our young people learning about their civic responsibility. Now I think maybe the old Civics as I learnt it in the 80s was relegated to the back burner for a while. Yet alas, look-see here……it has its own little “General Capability” category of its own: Personal and Social Capability. A little document known as The Melbourne Declaration found the idea so important it states in Goal 2 that it aims for all young Australians to become ‘active and informed citizens’ (MCEETYA, 2008). While I do find myself gravitating to this particular capability by default, I certainly recognise the importance of the other six. And for the art and science of my teaching, ICTs will play the pivotal role of enabling learning to go to analyse, evaluate and create through modifying and redefining learning outcomes. For the purposes of my Pedagogy Map the learning area of HASS is the focus. For the learning sequence, I will zoom in on the strand of Geography with year 7 for my example.
Digital Curation
I needed to digitally curate. Ok let’s break that down. I need to curate which means ‘pull together, sift through, and select for presentation’ (thank you dictionary.com) and that presenting bit is onto a digital space, which I have been instructed is scoopit and then my recently-ignored-through-priority-of-needs; weebly. Now I have to admit, scoop.it is a busy looking webspace. To say I was overwhelmed is an understatement. I went searching and sifting, went away, came back, started sifting and then selecting, unselecting, snooping on other scoop.it accounts...bingo…got some direction. The uncanny thing is, on my very first night of sifting and searching…boom….an article with my youngest child’s kindergarten teacher in the image! Seriously, what are the chances? I have left it on my curated site, purely for the memory of that crazy co-incidence. This journey is a thrill a minute. In a professional sense, what this equates to are standards we teachers must abide by: Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. More closely, standards 6.2 Engage in professional learning and improve practice and 7.4 Engage with professional teaching networks and broader communities (AITSL), which are both evident in what this assessment task has us do. And I can tell you now, the network that I am a part of with my GDLT cohort is one I value highly and will certainly nourish in my career to come. My focus: Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) Year 7 Geography. I am using the unit of work ‘Water in the World’. Click here for the full ACARA details of the unit content descriptors and elaborations. With that in mind, you will see a great deal of scooped material related to geography – the fabulous study of the earth and all its glory – and specifically water. I have links below of my scoop.it and my curated article of inspiration for the following learning sequence. I have certainly used a combination of my scoops for the sequence design, but the crème de le crème is “Web tool successfully measures farms’ water footprint”. Are you curiouser and curiouser yet Alice? Learning Sequence Design The learning sequence here is in three phases, addressing curriculum requirements, pedagogy and ICT tools utilised and the steps and activities that form the content. The three phases fall into the larger unit of work for a school term, ‘Water in the World’. The final focus of the sequence below is the student’s backyard, the Fitzroy Basin. The aim of the unit is to use the area in which we live – the Fitzroy Basin - as a point of study. This is tangible for the students. The sequence does accommodate low end pedagogy tasks such as word knowledge, map reading and interpretation but the focus is on deeper understanding of the interactions between people and place and the critical analysis of sustainability and conservation. The key goal is meeting the intercultural understanding requirement of ACARA’s General Capability through modification and redefinition use of ICTs, and to further incorporate ethical understanding in the process. This learning sequence can also be incorporated into year 7 Science curriculum, namely ACSSU116: “Some of Earth’s resources are renewable, including water that cycles through the environment, but others are non-renewable” ACARA link here. The third phase certainly works well for the History strand of the HASS learning area of the Australian Curriculum, see year 9 History: 'The extension of settlement, including the effects of contact (intended and unintended) between European settlers in Australia and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples (ACDSEH020)' (ACARA, 2016) Phase One: This early phase of the unit ‘Water in the World’ covers geographical concepts and terminology, geographical skills and abilities as per Australian Curriculum content descriptions. Utilising important explicit teaching methods, such as ‘I do-We do-You do’, students learn ‘classification of environmental resources and the forms that water takes as a resource’ which is ACHGK037 from ACARA. One ICT tool that was incorporated in this low-end pedagogy was the ReadWriteThink – Trading Cards app where students demonstrate through the creation and trading of their cards, the definitions and meanings of the geographical content and the meta-language of the subject area. During this phase, each student creates their blog, where these Trading Cards can be collected. While still low-end pedagogy in learning word meaning and subject content, the ICT utilized certainly falls into modification in that the technology allows a new way to learn. The blog will be their space for other phase entries. The teacher will create and share the class wiki. Phase Two: Looking at individual impact of water use: On their blog, the student creates a page dedicated to measuring their ‘water footprint’. To measure their water footprint they table the following calculations: For a shower: (Shower head uses 20 L per minute) Estimate how many minutes your shower takes: ___________. Therefore, number of minutes in the shower x 20 L. Which is: _______minutes x 20 = ________L of water. For a toilet flush: (Single flush: 12 L per flush OR dual half flush: 3 L per flush) Estimate how many times you flush the toilet a day: ___________. Therefore, number of flushes x 12 L for full flush or 3 L for half flush. Which is _______ x 12 or 3 = __________L of water. For teeth brushing: (Brush teeth tap on: 5 L per minute OR brush teeth tap off: 1 L per minute) Estimate how long you brushed for ___________ minutes. Therefore, number of minutes brushing x 5 L (tap on) or 1 (tap off). Which is________ x 5 or 1 = _________L of water. Their ongoing water footprint is recorded throughout the unit and posted onto their blog. They can comment on classmate’s footprint efforts and analyse patterns and methods for improvement. This conscious recording tool will help them to learn through doing, and comprehend human impact on our supply of natural resources. The opportunity for the blog is to share with students in other geographical locations and to compare their usage with how much water someone in a third world country has access to. The inspiration for this individual footprint, coming from the scoop.it artefact, could be taken to a new level of redefinition with the linking via video conference with a student in Emerald, discussing ways they have created a cotton production water footprint for their family’s property. This phase is an example of problem-based learning, where the student is given the scaffolding of the footprint, but what they do with that is for them to determine and work on collaboratively. This phase has the potential to turn into a larger than the class initiative, reaching to the rest of the school and beyond. Phase Three: With the foundation skills of geography content already achieved, students are introduced to the local Fitzroy Basin area through an interactive whiteboard GoogleMaps display. The early stage will discuss the rivers, creeks, wetlands, towns and cities of the basin area. The geographical knowledge will be learnt about the area. This takes approximately 2 lessons. Following this, the focus will be on intercultural understanding part of the cross-curriculum requirement as set out by ACARA. Again, using GoogleMaps on the interactive whiteboard, zooming in on Shoalwater Bay for the learning phase focus of ‘Continuity and Change’. Engagement with the class body would involve the following discussion: who has been to Shoalwater Bay? What do you know about Shoalwater Bay? Then the students are introduced to the topic for the sequence: Continuity and Change. Firstly, asking what those terms mean to them. I then unpack with the students the meaning behind the title. The next step is to watch the following video clip: ‘Exploring culture at Shoalwater Bay’ (youtube clip below). This video is about Lester Adams and his connection to the land at Shoalwater Bay and the importance of his heritage to his identity. His closing statement that ‘we have to hold onto what we have left…fast’, highlights the urgency for intercultural understanding. Following this, students are directed to create a concept map on their blog page, with ‘continuity’ on one side and ‘change’ on the other. Working in groups to discuss thoughts and questions, students put aspects mentioned from Lester Adams into one side or the other. The ‘continuity’ section of the concept map will grow as students are then directed to show what aspects from his traditional past Lester has incorporated into his daily life. For the final blog posting for this phase, the students must explain what they believe Lester means when he says: ‘we have to hold onto what we have left…fast’. The focus of this phase is to highlight that sustainability in a geographical sense is not just about the physical or natural environment, it is also about the sustainability of culture. This phase is evidence of the general capability of Personal and Social Capability, where ‘students develop an appreciation of the insights and perspectives of others, past and present; and an understanding of what informs their personal identity and sense of belonging, including place and their cultural and national heritage’ (ACARA, 2016). The specific year 7 Geography curriculum met here is ‘economic, cultural, spiritual and aesthetic value of water for people, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and peoples of the Asia region, exploring the multilayered meanings (material, cultural and spiritual wellbeing) associated with rivers, waterways, waterholes, seas, lakes, soaks and springs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples (ACHGK04)' (ACARA, 2016). Student Narrative My name is Isaac. I am 12 years old and I really love playing soccer. I have lived in Rockhampton all my life. I don’t mind school. My favourite classes are PE and Maths. I do all my work most of the time and don’t get into trouble. Some things I find boring. Below is a summary of my experience in the learning during certain parts of the unit: Water in the World. Phase One: I liked using an app in class. For some of the words we had to describe I couldn’t think of many words to describe them, like ‘aquifer’, but once I traded my card with Keiran and read that he had ‘bore’ I understood that because my Pop has a bore at his place in Gracemere. I really liked making my blog. I put some cool pictures of Coorio Bay on there, which is where my Pop has taken me fishing in his tinny. Miss told me we are going to be learning stuff about the Fitzroy Basin – where we are. I really like that because I can tell some of my stories in my blog, like how my Pop and I catch mud crabs and all the things about the tides Pop has taught me. Also, I could see the Trading Cards of Keiran’s on his blog, which I got from the wiki page Miss put up. He is really good with all the geography words. I wonder how I can help him with something? Phase Two: Keeping a track of my water footprint has been hard sometimes. Sometimes I just make up how long I spent in the shower. Miss said there are timers we can get. I hope she brings some into class for us. Since I saw how much more water we use when we leave the tap on while brushing our teeth, I have started turning it off when I brush. Well most times I have. I was wondering about how much water other kids use, so I looked at some of their blogs. Katelyn has a really low footprint amount for last week. She is a really small girl but I think it is mostly because she is also really clever. I left a message on her blog telling her I thought she was an amazing Water Warrior Princess. She messaged back on my page with a rule from her family: ‘if it is yellow let it mellow’. I thought that was really funny. It did make me think, if everyone in Australia had that rule, I wonder how much water we could save? Water saving is a big problem but looking at Katelyn’s small footprint, maybe we could work out an answer. Miss said we are going to be talking to someone from a cotton farm in Emerald. I have never been to Emerald. And I have never been to a cotton farm either. We saw all the graphs and statistics on how much water it takes for agriculture in Australia. It uses more than half of all our whole country’s water supply, which seems really strange when I think about how big and busy Brisbane is and yet the dotted farms around the place use the most water. Cotton and wheat and the cows must be really thirsty. Miss did say some things about how Australia is a primary producing country and our climate being so unpredictable….no wait…I just checked my trading card…variable…our rainfall is so variable. Phase Three I really liked watching Lester Adams’ video. I actually haven’t really heard many stories from indigenous people. I hear my Dad say some nasty things sometimes about Aboriginal people in Rockhampton. But I think if he heard Lester Adams and how clever he is and how much he loves this place, he wouldn’t say that stuff anymore. I had to really think about continuity and change. I think what Lester meant was that things keep moving and changing, but we have to always remember the things important to us, and not let that fade away. Miss said things that make us who we are have to be sustained, just like the water, we can’t waste them away. It would be like if someone told me I can’t go crabbing with my Pop anymore. I want to always do that. Miss said there are more videos to watch about other indigenous people from our Fitzroy Basin. I might try and find some by myself to put on my blog. Or I could even talk to Mr Bayles in PE, I heard at NAIDOC assembly him talking about what is means to him to be Aboriginal.
ICT Outline
Professional Networking and Learning
As mentioned earlier, I highly value the connections (friendships sounds more appropriate but I realise not as professional) I have made and am continuing to develop. The strength I draw from the support, both academically and emotionally, from my GDLT cohort cannot be overestimated. It is this sharing of information, support and knowledge, while helping the individual teacher, undoubtedly flows onto the betterment of the student. Which is what it is all about after all. Below are snipped images of where I scooped a colleague's great artefact and of my sharing of thoughts on the artefacts scooped. Through my established network, I cut through and was selective. I got help from those I knew I could call on. I imagine that is how my teaching networking will be. No time for dilly daddling. Go to who I know can help. Keep those connections alive. This is all about relationship building (and maintaining), which in the broadest sense is the very foundation of teaching. I have not used scoop.it to its full potential undoubtedly. But I certainly comprehend the power of such a tool. I love scootle, ACARA, teacher tube, and where I am doing my first practicum, watching and learning from an amazing range of teachers across varied disciplines. The culture is open and transparent. They share the information and share the load. It is all about the learning, always. It is the explicit teaching leading to the development of deep understanding through problem-based learning. And everywhere I look, not just at university, but on prac as well, ICTs are imperative for that journey, in all their forms.
References
Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority [ACARA]. (2016). Foundation to year 10 curriculum, Humanities and Social Sciences - Geography Curriculum. Retrieved from: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/humanities-and-social-sciences/geography/curriculum/f-10?layout=1 Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. 2014. Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Retrieved from: https://www.aitsl.edu.au/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers/standards/list?fa=4.3!Proficient Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA). 2008. Melbourne Declaration of Educational Goals for Young Australians. Melbourne, Victoria: MCEETYA.
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