20110321

production days #edchat

As the year goes on, I find myself spending more and more class time lecturing.

My lecture isn't quite like what I grew up with.  I grew up with the teacher putting her handwritten notes on the overhead projector and reading them while we copied them into our notebooks.  My lecture slides have more pictures than words, more analysis than content dump, and concept check questions for each table to consider collaboratively every 5 minutes or so.

But 35 minutes of this is not what I had in mind for my students.

What's missing is their production or application of knowledge.  They're not building as many prototypes as I'd like, or reaching goals through their own work, or solving problems that interest them, or researching their passions.

I need to let go of my timeline and build my lesson plans by phases not days.  Today I used a prezi as a giant sketch board and put down everything I wanted my students to learn and do in this unit.  Then I arranged it in a spiral of alternating content and production days where students build up the knowledge and skills they'll need to do our final project for this unit.

2 comments:

  1. Tyranny of the curriculum :(

    Check out the 2010 unit plans to see what I have been using to focus on "phases" and to circle back to big ideas -- http://martensvsb.wordpress.com/unit-plans/

    Depth of learning of big ideas evidenced by content (Knows) & its application (Do's). Very much a work in progress:)

    P.S. I would love to see the Prezi you built with your class.

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  2. thanks! your page is really cool and I'm glad you shared it with me.

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