BREATHE.
As usual, Term 3 was hectic and I'm just glad that we're down to the last term of the year.
I've been wanting to try the new SLS features (course plan and practice) since the last round when ETD Officer Shu Ping came down and joined us for our TTT discussion. At the same time, I was wondering how we should be organising our notes for the students, now that they each have a PLD. (I mean, it jsut wont make any sense if they have their PLDs on hand, and we still make them fill in the blanks on hardcopy notes, right?)
Hence, this term, when I began the topic of Weather and Climate, I made it my personal goal to apply our knowledge on Active Learning Processes and KATs by designing new SLS lessons, including at least 1 course module.
So how does a SLS course work?
Well, a course is essentially a few SLS lessons strung together, which is pretty neat, in my opinion. So what I did was I put together a course plan based on the KQs I'm going to cover. So far, I have created 2 course modules for KQ1:
- Factors affecting Temperature
- Rainfall and Winds
This is how the course plan looks like for Factors affecting temperature:
As you can see, there are 4 factors that affect temperature, and I've organised them neatly into each section (a SLS lesson).
And within each section, SLS business as usual:
I did try to repeat style/modes across the sections, eg. Trigger using poll/ word cloud, video stimuli, and ending with a summary and traffic light poll (AfL).
Right at the end of all the content, I also included an extension writing task for the learners to continue to demonstrate their learning at a higher level, while working on our LDQ essay writing skills learnt:
My verdict on SLS courses
I kind of love it and will definitely be using more of it. Here's a breakdown of pros and cons:
😀 It helps strings similar content areas together. So teachers and students no longer need to go SLS lessons one by one to revisit content. (I don't know about you, but my filing organisation in SLS is OMG so messy right now >_<)
😀 What it means is also the students will be able to organise similar topic content in the same folder, and revisit each course for refresher on a specific content area, rather than having to pull them out from various SLS lessons (which would be even harder to find if not named/modified in order).
😀 With the repeated similar mode of learning across sections, I noticed that the students do not even need me to pace them anymore after the first 2 lessons. I just opened up the activities, and they could fly on their own. In time to come, this may be a good approach for Differentiated Instruction, where learners can learn the same content at their preferred pace, without the teachers losing sight of monitoring and achievement of learning outcomes. (I monitor their progress and give real-time feedback to address wrong words used and/or misconceptions surfaced in answers).
😓 It can quite daunting to have the whole course set up ahead of lessons during term time (because I tried to have all sections completed in design before I began the teaching of the whole KQ).
😀 Luckily, SLS now allows us to edit assignments after assigning it to students. So for the second course I created, I could continue the design of subsequent sections with a simple pause of their assignment (usually between the class' last lesson for the week and before the lessons in subsequent week).
Our Journey Together
Besides the above I've tried on my own, the Sec 1 team (Ross, Wen Xin and me) have also co-constructed an Inquiry module for the Sec 1s.One thing I realised after our initial brainstorm was that, even though our intention was to create Inquiry, the first draft SLS lesson was still more Acquisition than Inquiry because of the 'answers' we gave at certain points of the lesson.
We had to tweak those 'answers' and turn them into 'questions' (mostly by inserting Interactive Thinking Routines). Using our Inquiry Question as the anchor, "Is water a renewable or a non-renewable resource?", we started by asking them to make a guess at first. Thereafter, at the end of each appropriate activity, we challenged them to think again, if their original guess has changed, and to explain how the stimuli presented has facilitated their Conceptual Change. When they presented with supporting reasons, they are also practising their reasoning skills and explanation skills. It also means that there is deeper student-content interaction and in turn, student-student interactions (through classroom discussions and consolidation).
I guess with this Guided Inquiry lesson experience, we are now moving along as we learn how we can better design varied learning experiences for our learners.
It is more fun when you do it together. 💖
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