Category: Professional Reading

Understanding by Design – Chapter 1 – Backward Design

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  • The “twin sins of traditional design”: activity-based (engaging activities on a topic) and coverage-based (get through the course content) design
  • The three stages: 20150302-210509.jpg
  • references to previous theorists, difference here is the explanation of a process, tools, templates etc to help successfully implement the UbD approach
  • 1-page template with design questions for teachers – gives an overview of an entire unit
  • design standards as quality control
  • valuable tool for self-assessment, peer-review
  • case study example
  • assessment are “teaching targets”
  • teaching enables performance
  • The UbD Design Matrix

Digging into designing learning

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I have started reading Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005)(this edition on Amazon). The phrase “backward design” has been floating around discussions of curriculum design for a while now, both on the ground at my school and ‘out there’, on the interwebs. This concept is not really new to me; I have read a bit here-and-there, following up on links from conference sessions, and have used similar strategies through various professional learning experiences (Intel in Education course, 2005, springs to mind – infusing technology into the curriculum by starting with the Essential Question and working back from there- review paper available here). However this is the first time I have sat down to read a textbook on the topic.

First impressions: this approach dovetails quite nicely with how I plan units of work. I think it will help me refine my techniques, and to be more explicit in sharing learning goals with students. I also like the quiet humour showing up here and there – always makes it easier to read a densely-packed serving of information when it is lightened a little with appropriate puns!

Thinking about children’s books in a global context

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A comment in an online forum led me to this BBC Radio 4 episode – A World Beyond Alice.

This was a fascinating documentary about the dominance of English-language publishing for children’s books, touching on the differences between marketing and publishing structures in different parts of the world, historical influences on publishing for children (apparently English-language publishing houses led the development of publishing for children, so the whole arena began in an English-centric environment), and even what would in Australia be termed the ‘cultural cringe‘: an assumption that one’s native language works were somehow not quite good enough for the international market.

I am planning to listen to this program again, and in the meantime have been doing some research. I have heard of IBBY , The International Board on Books for Young People before, and their biennial round-up of great children’s literature from around the world is wonderful, but why is it so hard to find material written from and about other cultures? Is it the cost of translating work into another language – a similar economic barrier to that of creating audio books?  Is it the lingering tentacles of the late dominance of the British Empire? There are very few (if any) schools in Australia that do not have children who are either recent immigrants or the offspring of migrant families – are they not being marginalised by not having a variety of cultures (including that of their families or ancestors) represented in reading materials in our libraries? This is separate from the complex and emotionally-explosive issues surrounding literature by the Indigenous Australian peoples, but perhaps there are parallels to be drawn…

diversity

Going back to the radio program that inspired this post, there is much that books born of other cultures can teach our children. The sight and sound of different landscapes and environments, the rhythms of different ways of life, the love and importance of families expressed in different customs. To use a very Asian saying, people all over the world are “same-same but different”, and experiencing the stories of other cultures through literature is one way we can help our children understand this fundamental truth of humanity.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Things I am reading about online…

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I do this a lot: check on my Twitter feed, click a few links, think “wow, so cool, how interesting”, or “I don’t agree with that” and then move on. Similarly with reading blog posts from educators I follow, or articles in various online or print media – I read, reflect, and tackle the next job.

Today is a Tuesday, which means I have only one class (I make up for this with heavy days on Monday, Thursday and Friday, and an extra dose of meeting on Wednesday). So Tuesdays are the day when I can tackle that flicking through tweets, reading professional articles, plan lessons, work on the Library displays, tidy my desk… well maybe that last one gets neglected. Perhaps I should also make Tuesdays my day for blogging?

Anyway, this morning I am thinking about an upcoming ASLA Tas mini-conference, where I am going to speak about the role of social media in professional learning, so I’ve been cruising through my Twitter stream and reading very interesting things!

Thing 1# The Art of Listening by Library Girl. She talks about her first day at her new school, finding out that she was supposed to be prepared for a staff activity and having to come up with something on the spot. This turned out to be a fantastic opportunity for Library Girl and her staff to really focus on the role of the school library and how they could work together. I am really inspired by this and would love to try something similar…

Thing 2# Online Building Offline Relationships by George Couros. This blog post reminds us that online vs offline is an artificial and unhelpful distinction. The video at the end of a young teacher using an online form to better connect with her students is great. George also links to two posts by Dean Shareski on the topic of “digital dualism” – here and here.

Thing 3# September is here! September is here! by Nikki D. Robertson. Nikki helps to run the TL Virtual Cafe – I think that I have been neglecting a great opportunity to learn from other TLs by leaving this in the ‘Different Time Zone- Too Hard’ Basket. The TL chat at 8pm Mondays is 10am here – halfway through my one and only lesson, but surely I can catch up after recess? Nikki has links to lots of other ways to connect with and learn from other TLs, so I am keen to look through these, especially the Global TL: Librarians Without Borders Google+ community.

Thing 4# The stream from the PETA conference today #petaaconf is interesting too.

Thing 5# The Book Chook always has something worth reading, and in this case something worth watching! Enjoy 🙂

Michael Rosen performs We’re Going on a Bear Hunt

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