Design of a classroom for the future.

http://www.homestyler.com/designprofile/a558d3d7-023b-4114-9298-646ba90bc284

 

Realigning a Lesson Plan with 8ways.

This week we had to re-desgin a lesson plan we had already constructed but this time incorporating and basing it upon the 8ways pedagogical thinking. If you want to learn more, please read my previous post labelled 8ways

I found this task quite challenging however seeings the inquiry unit that this lesson came out of was a weather unit which made it a little easier at the same time.

LESSON PLAN FOR FOUNDATION

Lesson outcome:

Students will extract information from a picture book about weather. Students will learn about a sunny day and the different features of it. 

Indicators:

1.Students will be able to answer comprehension questions to do with the picture book “Sunny Day” Anna Milbourne.

2.Students will be able to locate new information about the weather in the book and collate the information onto the board.

Previously, this lesson was set around a picture a storybook by Anne Milbourne called “Sunny Day”.

I would still start this way and then go onto asking the students if they have any stories or personal experiences of what they did on a Sunny day. I would also ask what they think is a perfect sunny day and what do think that looks like.

This connects the students through their own stories that they can share and it also lets them picture and visualise their learning which will lead them to knowledge and content of the lesson.

I would secondly get to the students to explore the outside. As a class you would discuss what kind of weather it is today. How does the weather make you feel? Is it hot, cold, sunny or rainy? Get the students to firstly encounter this on their own without sharing. Maybe they can walk around in a certain area. This is so they can see, think, act, make and share without words firstly and this also starts to work in learning from the nature and land. By Connecting this lesson with the outside classroom space really would take the children to a more hands on & first hand  experience about weather, this would increase their vocabulary and being lead by emotions and feelings rather than sight and 2D pictures.

Students might come back into the classroom and start forming new knowledge from their what they have learnt from the book and the experience outside. The might be working in groups outside coming up with facts and words they can add to their wall about a sunny day when they come together as whole back in the classroom.

The closing activity could be that class goes back outside and they made mini weather stations together through recycled materials. This will make sure they are learning and connecting to the topic and through creation and arts they learning from doing as well. Students are to monitor their weather station every day to see what it’s telling them what the weather will be like for that day. They are to go home and predict what it is like everyday as homework, this connects the home life to the classroom as well.

 

This lesson is based on this:

How we learn – culture way

1. We connect through the stories we share.
2. We picture our pathways of knowledge.
3. We see, think, act, make and share without words.
4. We keep and share knowledge with art and objects.
5. We work with lessons from land and nature.
6. We put different ideas together and create new knowledge.
7. We work from wholes to parts, watching and then doing.
8. We bring new knowledge home to help our mob.

 

FROM HERE:

8 Ways. (2013). 8 Aboriginal ways of learning. Retrieved from  http://8ways.wikispaces.com/

8ways

I have been exploring the way Aboriginal people learn. They have incorporated 8 unique ways of learning through connecting themselves with the land they live and breath on. Drawing from the inspiriation and what they learn from their surroundings they have created pedagoges that mirror this thinking and learning.

8 ways is about connecting learning to a deeper level of thinking and doing. This type of learning connects the learner and their thinking to the environment around them. This learning space connects the outside environment to learning as well. It moves learning from being strict and formal to evolving learning to be more about ‘land, culture, and spirit’.

I think this is such a unique way of learning and it’s really interesting to read up on this. I guess it creates a space for people to think about education in more relational sense, connecting themselves to the natural environment not just the literal curriculum.

Please find more information here: http://8ways.wikispaces.com/

8 Ways. (2013). 8 Aboriginal ways of learning. Retrieved from  http://8ways.wikispaces.com/

Future learning spaces…

Maybe future learning spaces will look like this…

Future Learning Spaces

Learning spaces of the 21st century are ever changing because of the technological and social advances that are always evolving in the world. Sometimes it is easy to imagine the future learning spaces to be just a new and improved version of what we have right now.

There is a tendency to envision a classroom filled with technology and electronic devices but as research shows there might be a significant limit on how many new devices are made in the future. Colin Schultz (2012) on Smithsonian.com blogged about rare earth minerals that are used to make the electronic devices we rely on in society today. Schultz reports “China, the world’s nearly-sole provider of rare earth elements, is warning that modern lust for high-tech toys and tools has caused the supply of these materials to plummet.” This is important to keep in mind when thinking of the future of learning spaces. What happens if all classrooms end up having the same resources of 3rd world countries because of the way we handled and looked after our resources today. I don’t think the world could ever go back that far in terms of the way we think and behave in our learning spaces, however it’s something to keep in mind.

However, if you do add the aspect of technology into the picture, there is this aspect and ambiguous question of whether online learning will become so heavily relied on that there won’t be any ‘school or classroom learning space’ as we know it any more. Or will learning be all situations in the virtual classroom where there is no face-to-face learning. Either way Schratzenstaller (2010) makes a prediction on that “In the future, learning spaces might be designed in such a way as to encourage students to collaborate with one another, with teachers, and also with people outside the confines of the classroom, not only in physical but also in virtual space,” (p. 32).