COURSE PROFILE
FEATURING: JILLIAN & TESSA
So imagine this, fifty, six and seven year olds all learning together. The thought of this would probably drive any teacher to early retirement. Although 2020 and now 2021 has been a year of social distancing, it’s also been a year of social online interaction. Tessa and I have decided to team up to create a Numeracy blended learning experience for our Grade 1 and 2s. We wanted to provide our students with an experience that involves various modes of teaching and learning with the framework of a game board. We thought of this idea, as it will open up more flexibility and agency for the students to learn at their own pace while also having choice.
Our Vision
The vision we see for our course involves us effectively teaching the content to our students via recorded video to pass on through Seesaw each day, face-to-face instruction on Google Meet, and pre-recordings of instructional videos that they watch from the comfort of their home. In addition to the teaching, we wanted the learning activities to be engaging and in a different format than students have used in the past. Our goal is to create a game board, which will involve various learning activities that will work as recycled learning tasks from previous well-taught instruction. The game board will be available at the fingertips of our students through their technological devices. Students can choose whichever activity they want to complete first. Our course will be a three week duration and our goal is that each student will complete all of the activities within that time frame.
Context
- We are on Treaty 4 Land, the original lands of the Cree, Ojibwe(OJIB-WĒ), Saulteaux (SO-TO), Dakota, Nakota, Lakota, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.
- 50 Grade 1 & 2 students split between two schools. One on the east end of Regina and one in the south end of Regina. Both belong to Regina Public Schools.
- Multicultural classrooms with varying learning styles and needs.
Course Format
Our course will be a Blended Learning model. We will be using a combination of in person learning and online learning. We chose this instructional framework because of our current context and struggles as primary teachers during a pandemic. During the pandemic, attendance of students started off great, but within a couple of weeks the engagement dropped and attendance was very inconsistent. Our goal for this course is to blend in person learning, online learning and a flipped classroom model to learning. We are blending various models of learning so that we as teachers are able to adapt within any circumstance that the pandemic presents.
Instructional Approaches
- Online Learning: If classrooms get shut down and learning transitions to online we will provide our students with live Google Meet lessons that would allow us to teach new concepts for our unit. It would also give students the opportunity to see the teacher and ask questions throughout the learning activity.
- Blended Learning: If students are absent from school we will have recorded videos of instruction coupled with pre-recorded videos with directions of the learning activities on the gameboard. This will allow students to watch and complete the learning activities from the comfort of their home.
- Flipped Classroom: The design of our course will also allow us to implement a flipped classroom. As teachers we have varying needs in our classroom. During Numeracy time in our classrooms the flexibility of our course and technology available in the classroom will allow students to complete learning tasks independently. We will also have the opportunity to assign pre-recorded lessons to different grade groups (1’s or 2’s) which then will allow that grade group to work independently to complete learning tasks while we are able to provide more support to students with learning needs.
Family Adaptations/Student Absences
Our course will be new and bring change to our students and their families, which leaves us both excited and nervous about the outcome. In order to make this course effective, we are making sure we have covered all of our grounds. With that being said, if students are absent for any of the lessons, everything will be available on Seesaw in a separate folder titled “We Missed You”. The game board will be given as a hard copy to students and it will also be available on Seesaw in order for the necessary learning activities to be completed. Students will be able to complete these activities either at home or at school at their own pace and with a great amount of choice.
Learning Management System (LMS)
For our online course we will be using seesaw as our main Learning Management System (LMS):
Seesaw is the LMS we choose because:
- Our families are already connected and familiar with the platform.
- Seesaw is user friendly and can be downloaded as an app on an iphone or tablet. It also can be accessed from a web address.
- Seesaw allows us as educators to give students access to the content at any time and from anywhere.
- Using seesaw allows us to take into account special requirements of students as online learners and the platform makes it a flexible design to work around student and family schedules.
- Seesaw is our main LMS, but it allows us to easily piece together other online instructional tools to design our course activities.
- Once students have their Seesaw home learning code, they are set up for success.
Bates, discusses in chapter 4 the importance of choosing a LMS that provides a framework that is different from a traditional classroom model with being flexible for online learners. For our online course we want to create a constructivist approach to learning through facilitating an online learning space that is flexible for our learners. We don’t want to replicate the current learning space within our classrooms, which is mainly direct teaching (because of COVID-19). We want to create a new learning environment that is both inviting and engaging for our students online. Through the constructivist approach to learning, our roles as the teachers will be to facilitate the process, provide resources, learner activities, and most importantly immediate feedback. Our hope is that our online course will offer students a new learning experience that we currently can not give them within our classrooms because of the many limitations that the restrictions have put on us due to the pandemic.
If you are unfamiliar with the seesaw LMS, but want to potentially use it for your own online course check out this video on what seesaw looks like for teachers!
Potential Instructional Tools
Tessa and I are both very new to technology. Right now we are working on researching effective online instructional tools to facilitate our activities within our course. Some potential programs we are looking at are:
Course Content
The course we will be designing is a three week Mathematics unit on 2D and 3D shapes for the Grades 1/2’s. We will facilitate the course through a combination of teacher instructed lessons, either through recorded video or live in the classroom environment. Other learning will take place online and it will be flexible to student and family needs. Students can either complete learning objectives independently at school or home at their own pace using their game board.
Learning Objectives
The students will be completing the following Saskatchewan Curriculum mathematics outcomes:
Grade 1
Grade 2
Assessment Strategies
Our first mini lesson will be a pre-assessment of students’ pre-existing knowledge of shapes. This pre assessment will allow us to make accommodations and differentiate throughout the course. Students will demonstrate their understanding of the outcomes through the various learning activities on the gameboard. We will monitor students progress for on-going formative assessment. Some of the activities on the gameboard are a summative assessment of the students’ understanding of the outcome.
Additional Considerations
- Families and Technology: At the beginning of the course, we will reach out to families and see if they have internet and technology available to them. If they do not, we will speak to our admin and see if our school or division would be interested in providing our families with either internet, a device or both. We can see this not being a problem, however, signing a contract would more than likely be needed.
- EAL Families and Learners: We both have EAL learners in our classrooms. We will collaborate with SWIS workers as well as our EAL teachers in our buildings to provide additional support with setting up the course and facilitation of the course throughout the three weeks. We will include our EAL teachers as additional teachers on the seesaw course so that they can support us and our students with continued differentiation to best meet the needs of our students.
We can’t wait to embark this new technological learning experience and are even more excited to learn from all of our peers in #eci834. So, if you’re following along and are ready to jump in and get both feet wet – it’s time! LETS ENJOY THIS WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY TOGETHER!
Tessa & Jillian
JILLIAN WARD 