In this presentation Kara explores:
New curriculum priorities in NSW – a review after 30 years
Concept-based curriculum – what it is; how we use it
How we design language lessons for this kind of learning
Tasks that use concept-based design
understanding and to apply learning to life With Kara Matheson Education Officer NSW Community Languages Schools Program Hunter Community Languages Please join in using: www.slido.com with #825005
of the land on which I work, the Pambalong Clan of the Awabakal people. Today we come together from lands far and wide that have been cared for by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for over sixty thousand years. Let us pay our respects to Elders past, present, and future.
after 30 years • Concept-based curriculum – what it is; how we use it. • How we design language lessons for this kind of learning • Experience a mini lesson that uses concept-based design Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
NSW • Give our students the richest, best experience of learning • Make CLSs learning even more relevant to students’ broader lives Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
deeper understandings of a subject • the capacity for students to apply the knowledge and understanding that they get in the classroom to life, to make sense of the world and to solve complex problems
and apply knowledge and skills? We use problem solving tasks and investigative projects that require ‘higher order’ thinking – where they analyse, evaluate and create. Through these tasks, students build and extend their subject knowledge and also develop an important range of skills.
lesson design to encourage deep learning and the application of learning to unique contexts – to life! Examples of concepts: Interconnection; Relationships; Responsibility; Culture; Faith; Wellbeing; Effort; Balance; Sustainability; Community; Beauty; Belonging; Identity.
1. Choose a concept 2. Choose a big (Essential) question to overarch all of the lessons in the unit – like an anchor 3. Plan the content to build experience with the concept: • Tasks • The language needed to do the tasks
not easy to find the answer; you may never find it! There may be no single "right" answer to the question (which may be initially frustrating). In order to make any question essential, you need to figure out a way to move away from a single answer. Push yourself towards uncertain territory.
people like change? Does knowing more than one language and culture change how we see life? What is a big question related to the concept of change that you want students to think about while they learn about your heritage language and culture?
Building vocabulary and engagement with the concept. • Draw 4 squares on the board, elicit the names of the seasons and have a volunteer write them up. • Small group chat – what do you like about spring? • Whole group share – go around, each group shares one thing. Write up ideas. • Back to small group share for the next season – Summer. • Back to whole group, starting with a different group. • Individual work – students complete the 4 worksheets, writing complete sentences. • Home task – ask your family - what do they like/d about the seasons in the heritage country. Facetime relatives overseas and ask them. Thinking = Understanding. • Follow-up – Next class have small group chats and whole group shares re the home task. Analyse and evaluate the results. Create something to illustrate the results.
graph of this result • Invite the class – “Let’s dig deeper and see if we can find any patterns in who likes which season. Let’s look for patterns in different groups. What groups could we look at? • Eg boys and girls; ages; country where person lives. Could we ask our family to rank the seasons to get more data to see how age and how living in the heritage country affects which season is more popular? • Evaluate (and return to the Essential Question for this concept): Does our changing age and change in the country where we live, affect which season we like best?
for supporting evidence • Students need to come to see that we need to be able to support our ideas with evidence • ‘Evidence’ might be very flimsy at first. If so, acknowledge the effort to give supporting evidence and set the bar a bit higher
these changes affect us? • Do you like these changes? What do you like about them? Creative expression: • Draw a picture with 2 sentences for each picture, describing a change that you like and a change that you don’t like. OR • Find a digital image for each one and narrate a description to go with it – use Adobe Spark https://www.adobe.com/express/feature
more higher-order thinking and transferrable understanding into students’ learning We organise a Unit of Work around a concept, like Change We choose a big question for the Unit of Work – ‘How does change affect us?’ Plan content to explore this question – identify key language features and plan tasks for students to use various thinking skills, including higher order thinking skills