Design+Rationale

=﻿ __Design Rationale__ = = = ====In today's modern classroom it is crucial to give students the opportunity to receive and apply learning in a digital environment. With a chosen Unit in mind the basis of my elearning design was informed from profiling the class for their prior knowledge, needs/wants and preffered learning styles, which all form part of the first three Learning Management Questions.====

====Upon collecting this information a few things were instantly apparent. The students all assumed and expected ICT integration would form part of their learning experience on any given day, also the weekly class timetable allows for two sessions of laptop and ipad use, where almost all students are able to login independently and make their way to the appropriate program/app.====

====Knowing that students were capable of using the laptops to this level I proceeded to deduce their knowledge of the need for healthy food options to benefit their mind and body. All students had the basic understanding of the importance of eating healthy food, most gave reasoning and some couldn't quite explain their thoughts properly, but understood the importance.====

====With the above mentioned student's understandings in mind I began to develop a unit that would draw from what the learners already knew and extend on that to include exciting, alternative forms of ICT as a platform to develop new knowledge and understandings relating to the set topic.====

I will introduce the unit through the use of eyecatching youtube videos that are actually advertisements from the Go for 2 & 5 campaign released by the Australian Government.
====Using Blooms Taxonomy (Benjamin Bloom, 1956) as my chosen framework I have identified the beginning point for my students to be introduced to the topic, and as per the framework started with a lower order thinking task. Once the advertisements have finished playing a class discussion, including brainstorming, will form a class mindmap of students ideas which will be created and displayed on the IWB. Of course, students will have the topic clarified throughout this process.====

====From there students will each create a question and answer relevant to the Healthy Food topic to be applied to mapped out charts for use with the Bee Bots. This task relates to both comprehension and application of the units topic. Each week students will have the opportunity to analyze the growth of their Tomato Plants, maintain the growth and collect data for further analysis in the form of a bar graph to be modelled by the teacher on IWB. Students will work collaboratively in the first part of this task and small groups will be put together combining low level with higher level students for ease of peer assistance to take place.====

====Extra assistance will be given in the form of more teacher guidance and scaffolded questioning. This will be necessary for 3 or 4 students who have lower level literacy skills. One particular student with ASD will require further direction, although one on one support is provided through the use of a special needs Teacher Aide who will be there to assist on the major task items.====

====A major independent task requires students to research and create a healthy kids lunchbox, while a major collaborative task requires students to actively participate in the creation of a stills film using Moviemaker. Both of these set assessment tasks will encourage students to use higher order thinking skills as they design, create and self analyze.====

====This unit incorporates the use of many types of ICT's, some of which students aren't familiar with, but I chose to persue because of their high level of engagement. By creating a challenge discussion would be more indepth with more questioning from the students which is favourable to the desired outcome. An array of activities were chosen which I felt catered well to all learning styles, to keep interest levels at a high while maintaining a higher level of thinking. These such activities required independant and collaborative thinking through either small groups or whole class. The unit was developed keeping in mind the curriculum links which are shown in the lesson sequence. I believe that for the duration of the term all students will draw further topoic information from utilising a variety of ICT's rather than without, making it so that ICT's are integral to the students learning. On completion of the unit students will also be more confident ICT users and able to operate ICT's in many different modes.====

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