And we’re back! This term is the second semester of our Masters of Education (M.Ed) cohort. It is crazy how fast time flies when you are working full time AND doing school work. Sometimes I wonder how I find the time for everything.
January marked the start of my 5th year teaching, and I can’t believe it has already been five years since I started in this profession. Reflecting back on my years so far, there have been so many challenges, and uncertainties and it is surreal to think I’m now at a place where what’s to come in the next year isn’t completely unknown.
I am interested in learning design because I think it is really important to be open minded in how you plan and deliver lessons to students, and continue to consider alternative methods to ensure you are continuously growing in your practice.
My Learning Design Experiences:
My experiences with learning design like many in the profession have ranged over the years. My first experience was during my Bachelor’s of Education (B.Ed) program. There was a very structured framework we needed to follow when planning lessons and units and we had to explicitly state when, where, and how, we touched on every piece of curriculum we were including in a unit or lesson. When teaching new teachers how to properly plan a lesson I understood the need for structure, but I often found the structure provided just didn’t work for the way my brain planned lessons.
When I graduated, and got my first job, I was so excited for my lesson plans to become less detailed in the justification for why I was doing something, and focus more on actually teaching. Two weeks after starting my first job, I said goodbye to my class for Spring Break and then we never met in person again because of the pandemic.
Nothing could have prepared me for the next two years and my learning design solely focused on helping my students get through what we needed to do, as safely as we could.
After two years teaching in rural schools in the Interior of British Columbia (BC), I made the move to Victoria and started at my current school. The shift from rural public school to an International Baccalaureate (IB) independent school was quite jarring and my learning design practices needed to shift. After two and a half years and some IB training later, I finally feel like I have honed my learning design skills for my context.
Similarly to when I was doing my B.Ed, the IB curriculum does have a set framework to work within for learning design, however, for me, the framework is set up in a way that makes sense for my brain so it is a tool I happily use every day!
My Process:
When thinking about learning design in an IB setting there are a few things I consider.
First, is the Statement of Inquiry (SoI). The SoI is what guides the unit, and is created by selecting from a list of general concepts provided by IB.
After creating a SoI we use the backwards design approach when planning the unit, which focuses on the intended learning outcomes versus covering specific content. I focus on creating the summative task, which I do by following the GRASPS framework.
Once I know what I will be assessing I choose Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills that we will focus on throughout the unit.
The chosen skills are explicitly taught and practiced throughout the unit, so at most I will select 3 skills to work on for any given unit. Formative tasks are then planned to help students practice the skills needed for their summative task, with opportunities for meaningful feedback planned along the way.
Only after I know what my SoI, ATL skills, formative and summative tasks will be do I start adding in the content. Our school still follows the BC curriculum, so I pull the content for units from this curriculum.
At first it feels like a lot of hoops to jump through but ultimately, planning lessons like this helps ensure that all of the requirements for IB are being met, and it makes picking up a unit plan from a previous teacher much easier to understand as we all follow the same framework!
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