Mihial’s Course Prototype Profile

Target Student Population

My target audience for this course prototype is my current classroom of kiddos. I have 27 students in a grade 5/6 split (11 in grade 6 and 16 in grade 5). We are located at St. Bernadette School in Regina, Saskatchewan. I have been teaching there for 5 years and we are a connected classroom. We have one-to-one devices that we will be using for this course prototype. All of the student work will be completed on their devices, in the classroom. My students have been working to enhance their digital skills and this project will be the next step up for them. There will definitely be a learning curve for some, however, I am confident that most will be successful.

Course Format

Students will be completing this course through a blended learning model. It will be further to the left of the blended learning continuum with face-to-face lessons in the classroom while utilizing classroom aids such as learning management systems (LMS). All coursework will be done synchronously during class time.

Course Toolset

Platform: The platform that I will be using for my course prototype is Class OneNote. My school division already uses Office 365, so my students have easy access to this application on their Clever homepage. This Microsoft program allows my students to view module lessons and individually distribute assignments where they can complete coursework independently. They can also use an area called a collaboration space where all students can contribute to a shared page that everyone has access to.

Instructional/Communication: Students will be able to access their daily lessons on the subject tabs on the left-hand side of the home screen. This will then be broken down into lessons organized by topic and date where students can find a particular lesson. Within that page, students will find instructions, links to websites, videos, pdf documents, images, and tasks for students to complete. Students can complete their tasks directly on the page and I can view the work that they have completed from the host’s perspective. In addition, they can work in small or large groups within the collaboration space to complete group work and brainstorm ideas together. OneNote is flexible in that you can incorporate other websites with it so that students are staying engaged and aren’t completing repetitive work over and over again.

Assessment Tools: As students complete their lessons, I can view each individual student’s work that they have completed. I can type (or write with a stylus) comments on their work to give them both formative and summative feedback on their assignments. Student can upload their own documents to the OneNote page as well. They can create Word documents, PowerPoints, digital posters, voice recordings, and videos which can be uploaded for myself and the student to see. All work that is completed by the student is private from the rest of the class unless it is in the collaboration space.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/video-class-notebook-for-onenote-for-windows-10-8e9fcec7-17e7-4fb8-9e2d-4757b8a5abe6

Course Content & Learning Objectives

My course will be focusing on the Grade 6 Physical Science unit of flight. The main outcome that will be highlighted through this prototype is FL 6.1. I have also included all of the indicators from this outcome from the Saskatchewan Curriculum. I will pick and choose certain indicators as a guide for each lesson.

Flight 6.1 – Examine connections between human fascination with flight and technologies and careers based on the scientific principles of flight.

• Observe and describe physical characteristics and adaptations that enable birds (e.g., ravens, hawks, loons, geese, hummingbirds, sandpipers, cranes, and sparrows), insects (e.g., mosquitoes, dragonflies, grasshoppers, bees, wasps, and butterflies), and bats to fly.
• Show how First Nations and Métis art and storytelling highlight understanding of and respect for birds.
• Research technological problems that had to be overcome to develop devices that fly (e.g., balloons, kites, gliders, airplanes, helicopters, and rockets) and explain how various creative solutions to those problems have resulted in the development of flying devices with different designs.
• Discuss historical and current contributions of individuals, including Canadians, who have contributed to scientific understanding and technological developments related to flight.
• Explain how inventions based on principles of flight have changed the way people work, live, and interact with the environment locally, nationally, and globally (e.g., bush planes in northern Saskatchewan, scheduled airline travel, supply of cargo to remote communities and mine sites, and transoceanic air travel).
• Describe career opportunities in Canada related to the science and technology of flight.

Assessment Strategies

Students will be assessed on the completion of weekly lessons within the course. Some lessons will be completed individually, some in partners, and some in groups. Each lesson will focus on one of the indicators listed above. Each lesson will require some type of work completed by the student/group whether it is a typed, recorded, or uploaded response. Each lesson will be assessed on our division’s assessment scale provided below.

Scale from Regina Catholic School Division – Adapted from Edsby

Considerations

EAL – I have one student who just recently moved to Canada from Vietnam. I have another student in my class who is fluent in both English and Vietnamese who I lean on for translation from time to time. OneNote has the feature of using Microsoft Translator where the text can be read or listened to. She requires an additional explanation of lessons & tasks in smaller chunks that are simplified directions. I can modify her specific page so that she is working on what is appropriate for her due to the language barrier with access to the translator feature.

Adaptations – I have one student who is on a transitional learning plan (TLP) for math and writing. Specifically, with writing, she struggles the most with sentence structure and spelling. OneNote’s feature of speech to text is very helpful for her which is known as dictate. She can also utilize the spell-check feature to ensure her spelling is correct. Other students will also benefit from these features as well. Other students will also require more direct instruction when learning how to navigate the program itself. I encourage students to ask and help their neighbours when learning something new as well.

Digital Citizenship & Classroom Management – Students will be expected to follow the same set of expectations and rules surrounding digital citizenship and the use of our devices. We spend a lot of time reinforcing proper digital procedures to ensure we are promoting positive digital citizenship within the classroom. This includes a variety of different items such as privacy, security, cyberbullying, information literacy, etiquette, handling of devices, and approved school websites.

https://agpartseducation.com/9-elements-of-digital-citizenship/

Attendance/Wifi – Students will not be expected to work on this course from home unless they are absent for an extended period of time. Students can access their office 365 account from any device using their school credentials and login information. In addition, students will be given ample time to complete their work within class time and we just received a new wifi booster in our classroom. This should help eliminate the slow internet speeds we were experiencing before Christmas.

Rationale:

I have chosen to use Class OneNote as my platform because I have a little bit of experience using it in a portion of my EC&I 832 major digital project. In this project, I explored OneNote, Canva, and Minecraft Edu for the first time. Within Class OneNote, I had students complete comprehension questions for a class read-aloud. This was a very basic use of OneNote as it was a learning experience for both myself and my students last year. I want to refresh my understanding that I already know and learn about the new and different features that I wasn’t utilizing then. My goal is to have more variety within each lesson and incorporate various different tasks for students to complete throughout the modules.

I decided to teach the grade six science unit on flight because the outcome specifically talks about human fascination and technologies used in the area of flight innovation. It seemed only fitting to use technology to do so. Also, I have pre-interns that will be coming back to join my classroom for the month of March. I thought it would be beneficial for my interns to see what a digital unit could look like in action with the subject that they will be teaching when they are here. When they are teaching they will be focusing on outcomes 6.2 and 6.3 of the flight unit. I am looking forward to my students experiencing their first fully digital unit in my classroom and seeing how it goes!

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