Fink Steps 4 & 5 For 5th Grade Math

To help you explore ways of developing more powerful learning experiences for your students, I suggest some ideas for each of three components of active learning:

Rich Learning Experience, In-Depth Reflective Dialogue, and Information and Ideas. Rich Learning Experiences. As you try to add an experiential component to the learning experience, look for “Rich Learning Experiences.” Certain learning experiences are “rich” because they allow students to acquire several kinds of significant learning simultaneously. What are some ways this can be done? The list below identifies in-class and out-of-class activities that promote multiple kinds of significant learning—all at the same time.

In Class: • Debates • Role playing • Simulations • Dramatizations

Outside of Class: • Service learning • Situational observations • Authentic projects

Action: Identify some learning activities to add to your course that will give students a “Doing” or “Observing” Experience. What “Rich Learning Experiences” are appropriate for your course?

In-Depth Reflective Dialogue. Another important ingredient of active learning is giving students time and encouragement to reflect on the meaning of their learning experience. There are various forms of reflective dialogue (See Table 3, next page). One can reflect with oneself (as in writing in a journal or diary) or with others (as in engaging in discussions with a teacher or others). Another key distinction is between substantive writing, in which one writes about a subject (e.g., a typical term paper), and reflective writing, in which one writes about one’s own learning. In reflective writing, students address a different set of questions, such as: What am I learning? What is the value of what I am learning? How am I learning? What else do I need to learn?

Information and Ideas. In order to free up some class time for the experiential and reflective activities identified above, you will probably need to explore alternative ways of introducing students to the key information and ideas of the course, i.e., the content. This might involve having them do more reading before they come to class. Or it may mean creating a course-specific website where you put content-related material. Or you can direct students to go to selected websites that have good content related to the course.

Action: Other than lectures, what ways can you identify to cause students to get their initial exposure to subject matter and ideas (preferably outside of class)?

Step 5. Integration In this INITIAL DESIGN PHASE (Steps 1-4),

you have created strong primary components for the design of your course. In order to complete this initial phase, you need to check how well these four components are aligned. Step 5 Worksheet gives a detailed explanation of how these four components can be integrated with each other.

Step 5: Integrating Steps 1-4 1. Situational Factors • Assuming you have done a careful, thorough job of reviewing the situational factors, how well are these factors reflected in the decisions you made about learning goals, feedback and assessment, learning activities?

• What potential conflicts can you identify that may cause problems?

• Are there any disconnects between your beliefs and values, the student characteristics, the specific or general context, or the nature of the subject in relation to the way you propose to run the course?

2. Learning Goals and Feedback & Assessment Issues to address include:

• How well do your assessment procedures address the full range of learning goals?

• Is the feedback giving students information about all the learning goals?

• Do the learning goals include helping the students learn how to assess their own performance?

3. Learning Goals and Teaching/Learning Activities • Do the learning activities effectively support all your learning goals?

• Are there extraneous activities that do not serve any major learning goal?

4. Teaching/Learning Activities and Feedback & Assessment

• How well does the feedback loop work to prepare students for understanding the criteria and standards that will be used to assess their performance?

• How well do the practice learning activities and the associated feedback opportunities prepare students for the eventual assessment activities?

A good tool for checking on integration, especially on Steps #2-4 above, is to use the Worksheet 1 on the following page. First, fill in a list of your learning goals for the course. If possible, have one for each kind of significant learning in the taxonomy. Second, for each major learning goal, identify how you would know whether students have achieved that kind of learning, i.e., what kind of feedback and assessment can you use? Third, again, for each major learning goal, identify what students will have to do to achieve that kind of learning. You will often find that the assessment and the learning activity are the same or very similar. But working through this exercise can be very valuable by ensuring that you in fact have specific kinds of assessment and learning activities for each of your learning goals and that you don’t just give “lip service” to them. After you finish your final check (below), then you can start the process of assembling these several activities into a coherent whole (Phase II, starting on p. 28).

Final Check and Review of INITIAL DESIGN PHASE.

A major benefit of this planning model is that it provides specific criteria for assessing the quality of course design. There are five primary criteria, four of which are illustrated by the highlighted areas of Figure 5 on the next page. It suggests that good course design meets the following criteria.

The basic design for this course is good if it includes…

1. In-Depth Analysis of Situational Factors It is based on a systematic review of all the major situational factors, in order to define the situational constraints and opportunities of the course.

2. Significant Learning Goals It includes learning goals focused on several kinds of significant learning, not just “understand-and-remember” kinds of learning.

3. Educative Feedback and Assessment It includes the components of educative assessment: forward-looking assessment, opportunities for students to engage in self-assessment, clear criteria and standards, and “FIDeLity” feedback. These allow the feedback and assessment to go beyond auditive assessment.

4. Active Teaching/Learning Activities It includes learning activities that engage students in active learning by incorporating powerful forms of experiential and reflective learning, as well as ways of getting basic information and ideas.

5. Integration/Alignment All the major components of the course are integrated (or aligned). That is, the situational factors, learning goals, feedback and assessment, and the teaching/learning activities all reflect and support each other.

If the course design rates “High” on each of these five criteria, then the basic components of good design are in place.