Return to My Page Peggy Collins

Peggy, I've commented in *green* ~jk

Design a Conceptual Framework

The following prompts will help you define the conception framework of your project.

For individuals: Reflect on this series of questions and record your responses on your own wiki page. Be ready to share at your next team meeting. Don’t become too wedded to your ideas yet.

For a group: When you meet, share and discuss your individual responses, then respond to the questions again together. If you aim for a collaborative project, try to “mash up” your efforts into one shared project idea.

1. What important and enduring concepts are fundamental to each subject you teach? List them. Try to limit the list to two to three big concepts for each subject. Refer to content standards you teach to determine those covered by these big “umbrella” concepts. 

 Change- cycles

Global awareness

Cultural awareness- global citizens

2. Why do these concepts matter? Why are they important? 

 We are interconnected, we have similarities and differences. 

 We impact the environment

3. Outside of school, who cares about these topics? What is their relevance in different people’s lives and in different parts of the world?

 Everyone needs to know that we are part of a bigger picture, one world, many cultures make up it

 Impact on life cycles- environmental concerns

 Peggy this area is really rich. I think an ePals collaboration may make sense. Here's the link. www.epals.com

4. Select one or two of the most promising of these topics and think about real-to-life contexts to answer: What are the interdisciplinary connections? What other subjects might be incorporated?

Writing, geography, literature, science, data collecting,

 Find and graph weather temperatures between Eugene and another city in South America, is there a difference, why?

Write to a primary class in a major city in South America- email penpals

Environmental concerns- Rainforest v.s old growth forests

This would be fun to do on the cusp of a season.

5. As you begin to imagine working with these topics, how might you push past rote learning into analysis, evaluation and creation? Incorporate Bloom’s “rigor” verbs in your answer.

Analysis data from weather graph, predict what the temperature will be in 3 months, justify your predictions

Create questions to ask students in South American school,  compare their answers with your own

I'm wondering how you can zero in on not-trivial questions (a pitfall I've has w/ epal kinds of exchanges)...thinking on this one

6. Imagine authentic ways students might engage in this topics within a project and the ways 21st century skills might be addressed. Hint: The terms collaboration, digital tools, and information literacy could appear in your answer!

  develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures.

I'd like to dig into "cultural understanding"-- it's a term that merits some attention. Wonder if keeping daily diaries and sharing them would be revelatory.

7. What aspects of these topics will interest your students? (A feature that seems superficial or tangential but fascinates students can give you entrée into more essential matters, so brainstorm as many as you can.)

Making friends with other kids across the world

Wouldn't it be fun to have a let's pretend day when you switch identities!!! You could film the whole thing (I'd help, swear). Eat what they do, spend the amount of time they do on the subjects they study... would be a great culminating activity that would require in-depth understanding.

8. What learning dispositions should you cultivate and ask your students to pay attention to? (REINV p. 51-52)

Collaboration, stickability

Don't you love that term 'stickability'? I want to get the book referenced in that class example.