Reflection on a 1:1 Environment

Video Transcription

Hello, and thank you for joining me today to talk about reflection on constructivist theory in a 1-to-1 learning environment. We're going to begin by looking at these central questions, which we'll be able to answer by the end of today's tutorial.

First, we're going to look at, why is it important to intentionally design lessons? Then we're going to look at, how can I use Marzano's design questions to reflect on my lesson design? And lastly, what is Plus/Minus/Delta, and how can it help with my reflection?

Let's get started by doing a quick review of PBL, constructivism, and 1-to-1. Remember, PBL is an extended process of inquiry in response to a complex question, problem, or challenge. It's carefully monitored by the teacher, who acts as a facilitator, but who comes up with the question him or herself and poses it to the students.

It's based on constructivism. Constructivism is when students learn by constructing or creating their own meaning. It's very student-centered, and again, the teacher acts as a facilitator.

1-to-1 learning environments is when there's one device for each student. You're going to have a 1-to-1 learning environment where the students are also able to take their computers home. And this is considered an always- learning environment.

We're going to look at the same lesson plan we've been looking at for a lot of our reflections. Today's adapted lesson plan is the same lesson plan we've been looking at throughout this coursework. And this is the lesson plan that students will read and translate Shakespeare, and they will prove their understanding by creating a way to help other students understand Shakespeare.

Students will work in small groups, and students will generate ideas and hypotheses and then test these. Students will take on roles in the groups, and students will have access to technology, as this is a 1-to-1 classroom setting.

We're going to use Plus/Minus/Delta for our reflection today. And if you'll remember from the others, this is just a really simple way to reflect on what worked well and what didn't, and how are we going to improve it?

We're basing our reflection on Marzano's lesson design question of, what will I do to help students generate and test hypotheses about new knowledge? There are three elements that fall underneath this question. I've used Plus/Minus/Delta to evaluate how these three elements apply to the lesson.

We'll get started by looking at organizing students for cognitively complex tasks. A plus for this is, I was able to create mixed-ability groups. Remember, mixed-ability groups are the best type to have, because it allows for peer scaffolding. Higher-achieving students can help lower-achieving students, and struggling students can also learn skills to be successful from watching the higher-achieving students.

The students also take on various roles, which is a plus. So we've designated, who is the group leader, who's the note taker, who is the person who's the transcriber, and so on and so forth. And these roles help everybody take on an amount of responsibility that's appropriate to their strengths and weaknesses. So this is a way that teachers have differentiation in the classroom.

A minus is that there was limited student choice. Student choice was limited, because I was the one who assigned the groups. But then I felt like there was maybe too much choice in who took on what role within the group. And while I want students to choose the roles that fit their strengths and weaknesses , I don't want this to be an area of focus where they're losing a lot of time, where they could be working on the project. And for our example, it was.

So delta is, how am I going to improve these things? Well, I might group people together based not only on mixed abilities, but also their geographic locations within the city or the town. If you teach in a traditional school district where students go to a community-based school, that's not going to be a problem. But for those of us who teach at maybe private schools or charter schools, where we get students from all over our area, we do have to consider geographic locations, so that they can communicate outside of the classroom.

I also want to look at class schedule. I want to make sure that students who have similar study halls are together, et cetera. And in the future. I've decided that I will assign roles to students.

The next element we're going to look at is engaging students in cognitively complex tasks involving hypotheses, generation, and testing. A plus for this is that the task was complex. They had to figure out a way to make Shakespeare accessible for all students. And then it required deep thinking. There wasn't a surface-level solution available.

Another plus is that the various groups generated vastly different hypotheses. And so that was definitely a good thing, because we were able to see how there might be multiple solutions to one answer.

A minus is that groups were reluctant to test their hypotheses and then to recreate them. Sometimes they got stuck on, this is our original idea, we've done a lot of work with it, we don't want to start back at square one and some students were more engaged than others.

It might seem like this sort of thing is inevitable. Maybe there are some students who just are not ever going to be engaged in Shakespeare. But if you get creative enough with the class, and you can inspire them enough with the assignment, you might find that the kid who's really into computer programming will see this as a challenge. Maybe he's going to create an app to help translate Shakespeare, and so he could become more engaged.

My delta is that I'm going to make testing hypotheses an actual requirement in the assignment rubrics so that they know that the first plan that they come up with may not be the plan that they end up presenting to the class. And that's OK, and that is actually going to be reflected in the grading assignment.

And then I'm also going to try to find out what intrinsically motivates the different students to help them stay engaged. So I gave the example of the student who enjoys programming earlier. Well, I might also have a student who's really musically inclined. Maybe I can try to find a way to help that student have a voice in his or her group.

The last element of our Marzano lesson design question is providing resources and guidance. A plus to this is because it is a 1-to-1 classroom, there were multiple online resources. And there were also in-class resources, including the teacher, who's an expert in the content area. And the students responded well to the teacher acting in more of a facilitator role, someone they bounced ideas off of, rather than someone who was telling them what to do.

A minus is that students relied too much on online resources only. And if we had unlimited online resources in how to further our understanding of Shakespeare, then this wouldn't be an assignment. But we don't. And so we want students to kind of think outside of the box and maybe use some more traditional classroom resources, like their textbooks or their Shakespeare books.

And then students were seeking teacher approval instead of experimenting. They wanted the teacher's final stamp of approval on their first project that they came up with, or their first hypothesis that they came up with. And we really want to see them going through the scientific process with this assignment, even though it's not in a science class. And we also want them evaluating and synthesizing, reaching those higher-order thinking skills on Bloom's taxonomy. So if they rely too much on the teacher for approval, they're not going to reach those higher levels.

So delta is that I'm going to step back even further and really force the facilitator role. I'm not going to synthesize for them, and I'm not going to analyze for them. I'm going to force them to do that. And I might also offer experts as resources. Maybe someone from the local Shakespearean theater could come in and speak to my students.

Let's reflect. How can Plus/Minus/Delta help you evaluate your lesson plan?

So to review, today we talked about why it is important to intentionally design our lessons. And in this case, it's important because we want to look at how Marzano's lesson design question and its three elements are incorporated into a 1-to-1 classroom. And we also looked at Plus/Minus/Delta, which is just a super easy way for us to reflect on how this lesson was successful, some areas of weakness it had, and how we're going to improve it, under the lens of Marzano.

Now it's your turn to apply what you've learned in this video. The additional Resources section will be super helpful. This section is designed to help you discover useful ways to apply what you've learned here. Each link includes a brief description, so you can easily target the resources you want. Thank you for joining me, and happy teaching.