Design Rationale
The unit in which this blog has been based on is entitled ‘A healthy lifestyle, a healthy me’. It is a transdisciplinary unit that is designed for a year 7 class of 24 students. Below is an indication of the types of learners in the class.
Kinesethic learning Styles: These students learn best when they are actively engaged in their learning experiences. They prefer to work with hand-on materials.
Visual learning styles: Students with this learning style prefer to work with visual aids such as images, colours and videos.
Visual learning styles: Students with this learning style prefer to work with visual aids such as images, colours and videos.
Auditory learning styles: Through this learning style students learning is enhanced when they can read or listen to what is being taught. ( Reid, 1984)
This unit plan addresses all of these learning styles as it provides opportunities for students to create their own movie, use images to reinforce their understandings and read various websites and other resources to gather information.
The unit focuses on three Key Learning Areas including Health and Physical Education, Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and English. The Essential Learnings is which this unit addresses are as follows:
This unit plan addresses all of these learning styles as it provides opportunities for students to create their own movie, use images to reinforce their understandings and read various websites and other resources to gather information.
The unit focuses on three Key Learning Areas including Health and Physical Education, Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and English. The Essential Learnings is which this unit addresses are as follows:
Health and Physical Education
Ways of Working
· Collect, analyse and evaluate information and evidence
· Draw conclusions and make decisions supported by information and evidence
· Propose, justify, implement and monitor plans or actions to promote health and wellbeing
· Reflect on and identify the impacts of diverse influences on health and wellbeing
· Reflect on learning, apply new understandings and identify future applications
Knowledge and Understandings
Health
· Health has physical, social, emotional, cognitive and spiritual dimensions which are interrelated
· Family, peers and the media influence health behaviours
Personal development
· Identify and self-image are influenced by environmental factors, including the media, and social expectations of age, gender and culture.
Information Communication Technologies
Inquiring with ICTs
· Organise and analyse, experiment with and test data and information from a variety of sources
· Evaluate data and information gathered for usefulness, credibility, relevance, accuracy and completeness
· Reflect on, analyse and evaluate how ICTs have assisted in meeting the inquiry purposes and in developing new understandings.
Creating with ICTs
· Develop plans and proposals, considering common ICT design features
· Express and creatively represent ideas, information and thinking
· Creatively document and present planning, thinking and learning using a combination of media
· Reflect on their use of ICTs as creative tools and evaluate the quality of their ICT responses, plans and processes against criteria
Communicating with ICTs
· Collaborate, develop, organise and present new ideas
· Reflect on their use of ICTs and consider feedback to improve collaboration and refine communicate meaning.
Ethics, issues and ICTs
· Apply codes of practice for safe, secure and responsible use of ICTs
Operating ICTs
· Develop operational skills and begin to use the extended functionally of a range of ICT devices
· Develop strategies for learning new ICT operations and consider different ways to perform tasks
· Reflect on, analyse and evaluate their operational skills to meet the requirements of system resources, processes and conventions
English
Ways of Working
· Identify main ideas and the sequence of events, make inferences and draw conclusions based on ideas information within and across texts
· Construct non-literacy texts to express meaning and messages
Knowledge and Understandings
Speaking and listening
· Speakers use their assumptions about the characteristics of listeners to engage and their interest and attention
· Active listens identify ideas and issues from others viewpoints and clarify meanings to justify opinions and reasoning
Literacy and non-literacy texts
Non-literacy texts evaluate, inform, present arguments and persuade
The above information has been adapted from the Queensland Studies Authority (QSA, 2007).
It is intended that throughout this unit students will develop deep understandings about attaining a healthy lifestyle, who can influence it, and how it could be promoted in the school environment. For this to occur students will participate in a range of activities that will contribute to the overall assessment task of creating a PowerPoint/Movie (using MovieMaker) to demonstrate their understandings of the content being covered within the unit. The following table highlights the use of ICTs being used throughout the learning experience as well as links to the Big 6 framework and other theory.
Learning Sequence/Activities | ICT used for …. | Link with framework and theory |
Week 1: What is a healthy lifestyle? Developing concept maps using bubbl.us Week 2: Creating spreadsheets | Students develop a concept map using bubbl.us to demonstrate their prior knowledge associated with the topic healthy lifestyles. Students use spreadsheets to record information on own eating and exercise habits. | Big 6 framework: Define the information problem & determining information needed. Establishing students prior knowledge assists teachers when developing effective learning experiences as they can see the level at which the students are at (Mazarno & Pickering, 1997) |
Week 3: Looking at Youtube clips, images etc | Students look at Youtube clips, images and other resources to see how the media can influence a healthy lifestyle and to determine whether they will incorporate the use of these in their final product. | Big 6: Determining all possible resources Higher order thinking is used through this section as students form ideas to sythensis information relevant to creating their assessment task (Department of education and Training, 2004) |
Week 4: Exploring various websites | Students explore various websites to gather information fro their final product. | Big 6: Determining the best sources/Locate sources/find inforamtion in sources/extract relevant information. Students are also using their higher order thinking skills within these lessons as they evaluate how appropriate information is towards their final product and |
Week 5: Producing final assessment piece Using MovieMaker/PowerPoint to demonstrate understandings. Use blog to reflect on learning experience/final assessment task. | Students create a video/movie of what they have learnt from previous learning experiences assoicated with the topic 'A healthy lifestyle'. Students will use a blog to reflect on their learning experiences and final product. They will also discuss group participation. | Big 6: Organise from multiple resources/present information/judge the product & process. According to the Institute for Interactive Media & Learning (2007), when students reflect on their learning experiences they are incorporated their critical thinking skills and enhancing their future learning. |
References:
Department of education and Training (2004). Productive Pedagogies: Higher-order thinking. retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics/html/pedagogies/intellect/int1a.html
Institute for Interactive Media and Learning (2007). Why is reflecting important? Retrieved from http://www.iml.uts.edu.au/learnteach/groupwork/unit7.html
Marzano, R. & Pickering, D. et al., (1997). Dimensions of Learning: teacher's manual. Aurora, Colorado, USA: McREL
Queensland Studies Authority (2007). English Essential Learnings: by the end of year 7. Retrieved from
http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/
Queensland Studies Authority (2007). Health and Physical Education Essential Learnings: by the end of year 7. Retrieved from http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/
Queensland Studies Authority (2007). Information Communication Technologies Cross-curriculum Technologies: by the end of year 7. Retrieved from http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/
Reid, J., (1984) 'Perceptual Learning-Style Preference Questionnaire' . Available from http://lookingahead.heinle.com/filing/l-styles.htm
The Big 6 (2007). Information and technology skills for student acheivement. Retrieved from http://www.big6.com/what-is-the-big6/
Department of education and Training (2004). Productive Pedagogies: Higher-order thinking. retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics/html/pedagogies/intellect/int1a.html
Institute for Interactive Media and Learning (2007). Why is reflecting important? Retrieved from http://www.iml.uts.edu.au/learnteach/groupwork/unit7.html
Marzano, R. & Pickering, D. et al., (1997). Dimensions of Learning: teacher's manual. Aurora, Colorado, USA: McREL
Queensland Studies Authority (2007). English Essential Learnings: by the end of year 7. Retrieved from
http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/
Queensland Studies Authority (2007). Health and Physical Education Essential Learnings: by the end of year 7. Retrieved from http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/
Queensland Studies Authority (2007). Information Communication Technologies Cross-curriculum Technologies: by the end of year 7. Retrieved from http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/
Reid, J., (1984) 'Perceptual Learning-Style Preference Questionnaire' . Available from http://lookingahead.heinle.com/filing/l-styles.htm
The Big 6 (2007). Information and technology skills for student acheivement. Retrieved from http://www.big6.com/what-is-the-big6/
