This discussion is an opportunity for you to evaluate how the purposeful integration of technology in instruction and assessment supports student acquisition of 21st-century skills and more importantl
Week 5 Discussion 1 Career and Technical Education
This discussion is an opportunity for you to evaluate how the purposeful integration of technology in instruction and assessment supports student acquisition of 21st-century skills and more importantly career and technical education (CTE). In the past few weeks, you have had the opportunity to consider the inclusion of technology in teaching and learning as well as the principles of UDL in practice. Now, we consider how UDL supports the acquisition of 21st-century skills as these relate to career and technical education. To prepare your response for this discussion, you will review Chapter 5 from the Edyburn text (2013), the 21st-century skills document, and the ACTE website section on career and technical education (Links to an external site.) and then evaluate them in relation to the principles of UDL. As always, reviewing the Instructor Guidance for the week is strongly encouraged for intellectual elaboration on the topics for the week and additional assistance for all assessments.
When contemplating 21st-century skills, associations must be made with respect to creativity, critical thinking, problem solving and metacognition and a host of relevant life skills. Keeping in mind your knowledge gained thus far on UDL and 21st century skills. You will review three sources to inform your initial response to the discussion including the ACTE website on Career and Technical Education (Links to an external site.) (CTE), a short video by Inside Schools titled High School: What is Career and Technical Education? (Links to an external site.), and your own state’s Department of Education website or local school district website, specifically, information pertaining to Career and Technical Education (CTE).
Initial Post: Create an initial response that addresses the following areas.
Analyze in a paragraph Career and Technical Education (CTE) by giving a succinct summary of your understanding of this area of education.
Evaluate in a paragraph how the principles of UDL support career and technical education.
Summarize in a paragraph the relationship between the goals of CTE, learner motivation, and acquisition of 21st-century skills.
Describe in a paragraph, or by using a table or some other visual, what you learned by reviewing your state’s Department of Education webpage on CTE and/or your local school district’s utilization of CTE.
Guided Response: Respond to at least two peers. In responses, evaluate how your understanding of 21st-century skills, UDL and career and technical education is either in concert with or contrasts from the discussion presented by your peers. Paying close attention to the evaluation they presented on how UDL can be incorporated to support career and technology education.
Again, although two replies is the basic expectation, for deeper engagement and learning, you are encouraged to provide responses to any comments or questions others have given to you to further the conversation. The continued conversation provides you with opportunities to further demonstrate your content expertise, critical thinking, and real world experiences with the topics of career and technical education and UDL.
Week Five Instructor Guidance
Welcome to Week Five of EDU620: Meeting Individual Student Needs with Technology. Please be sure to review the Week Five homepage and review the specific learning outcomes for the week, the schedule overview, the required and recommended resources for the week, the introduction to the week, and a listing of the assessments for the week. Next, be sure to read this entire Instructor Guidance page.
Overview
Week Five continues our learning about UDL with an emphasis on how UDL supports 21st-century skills and relates to career and technical education. As you recall from Week One, 21st- century skills refers to a broad set of knowledge, skills, work habits and character traits that are deemed as critically important to succeed in today’s world. You will consider 21st century skills in relation to career and technical education (CTE) in the discussion this week and the creation of the instructional plan for the assignment Week Five Assignment.
Intellectual Elaboration
Do you recall the three key principles of UDL? Take a look at the summary below for a quick review, if not!
Principle I. Provide Multiple Means of Representation: Present information and content in different ways
Principle II. Provide Multiple Means of Action and Expression: Differentiate the ways that students can express what they know
Principle III. Provide Multiple Means of Engagement: Stimulate interest and motivation for learning
Now that you have reviewed the principles of UDL, keep reading for information about career and technical education.
Career and Technical Education
Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs provide students with a foundation for a wide range of careers that reflect the needs of the current workplace. More specifically, CTE programs provide quality work-based learning programs, relevant academic skills, and the employability skills and workforce behaviors necessary for college success and in technical careers. CTE programs support skills such as communication, critical thinking, problem solving, entrepreneurship and leadership (Association for Career and Technical Education).
Recall what you have learned from the Partnership for 21st-Century Learning (P21.org) regarding the skills students need to advance as citizens, learners in higher education settings, and as globally prepared and competitive workers. Is the relationship between these skills and what CTE promotes evident to you? Consider that associations can be made between UDL and the key concepts pertaining to CTE. These associations must be in your focus as you delve into the assessments for this week and as you prepare for the Week Six Final Project: Community Event.
UDL Instructional Plan
By now you have had several opportunities to explore and analyze the principles, guidelines, and practices associated with UDL. It is therefore time to put all you know into practice by creating an original instructional plan based on UDL principles. According to UDL, there are three key characteristics of universally designed lessons 1) clarity of objectives, 2) flexibility and options and 3) accessibility. When these three components are incorporated into an instructional plan you ensure you are meeting multiple learning styles, needs and preference to create a classroom where all students benefit.
Clarity of Objectives
Objectives are what the students can do after instruction. Though there are many formulas for writing objectives, effective objectives most often contain at least three items: a measurable Performance, Conditions under which the performance will occur, and a Criterion indicating what level of performance is expected.
Performance: Describes what the learner will be doing when demonstrating that he/she has reached the objective; i.e., What will the learner be able to do?
Conditions: Describes the relevant conditions under which the learner will perform; i.e., Under what conditions do you want the learner to be able to do it?
Criterion: Indicates how the learner will be evaluated, or what constitutes acceptable performance; i.e., How well must it be done?
Objectives are considered non-negotiable, they set the standards for what the student will know and be able to do after instruction. Objectives are effective when they are written clearly leaving no confusion about what is required. Moreover, lesson objectives should directly align with and support a grade level content state standard. Below are examples of a standard derived from the Common Core State Standards for grade 5, English/Language Arts for Reading Informational Text and a corresponding lesson objective;
STANDARD: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.R1.5.2 – Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details: summarize the text.
OBJECTIVE #1: Students will identify the main idea in a selected reading passage.
OBJECTIVE #2: Students will summarize a short reading passage with support from at least 3 details from the text.
In Objective #1, above, the performance is that students will identify the main idea; the condition is in a selected reading passage. There is no criterion provided but there is likely only one main idea.
In Objective #2, above, the performance is that students will summarize, the condition is using a short reading passage, and the criterion is to use at least three details from the text.
According to the Center of Excellence in Teaching (CETL) from Iowa State University,
A key to making courses and lessons coherent and tests fair is to write learning objectives-explicit statements of what students should be able to do if they have learned what the instructor wants them to learn-and to use the objectives as the basis for designing lessons, assignments, and exams. The objectives should all specify observable actions (e.g., define, explain, calculate, solve, model, critique, and design), avoiding vague and unobservable terms like know, learn, understand, and appreciate. Besides using the objectives to design your instruction, consider sharing them with the students as study guides for exams. The clearer you are about your expectations (especially high-level ones that involve deep analysis and conceptual understanding, critical thinking, and creative thinking), the more likely the students will be able to meet them, and nothing clarifies expectations like good learning objectives (2014).
Tips for writing clear and measurable objectives:
Avoid words like understand, learn, and know. They are not measurable because there is no product involved.
Sometimes the degree of accuracy is implied by words such as correctly and successfully.
Not all lessons result in a tangible product. Therefore, when students verbally demonstrate their learning, the measurable action involves telling, explaining, or discussing.
Flexibility and Options
Providing options for students during the learning process motivates students and increases their likelihood of attaining success in a given lesson. This supports the core of UDL; the removal of barriers to learning. Give students choices about how the access information (e.g., choice of textbook; audio or digital format). Offer students choices about what they can produce to demonstrate mastery of learning. By allowing students to choose it will increase their motivation, as students will succeed when the task seems doable and not demanding.
Accessibility
From your readings and videos throughout this course, you now understand that UDL implementation in a classroom is ensuring that all students will have access to all parts of the learning experience. While some students may require supplementary accommodations (for those with a particular disability); UDL decreases the need for accommodations for students.
Instructional Strategies: Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR)
Gradual Release of Responsibility, designed by Drs. Douglas Fisher & Nancy Frey, is an instructional approach that engages students in purposeful instruction that requires that the teacher shift from assuming all responsibility, gradually releasing students over the course of a lesson, unit of instruction, or unit of time. The approach supports instruction that mentors students into becoming capable, independent thinkers and learners when handling the tasks they have not yet become experts at (Fisher, 2008). There are four interrelated components of the GRR model as depicted in the graphic below;
Effective use of GRR in a given instructional plan would begin with the teacher’s responsibility including the Focus Lesson also known as Instructional Input in which the teacher is able to model his or her thinking and share the intended learning for the lesson. This phase of the lesson is meant to be brief and provide the most essential information to get the lesson started.
The second phase of GRR is Guided Instruction or Guided Practice, in which the teacher prompts, questions, facilitates or leads students through tasks at a beginning level following the teacher’s modeling. This phase is also meant to be brief in comparison to the remaining phases of the process.
The lesson should now shift more toward student responsibility, including the teacher less and less with instruction. Collaboration with others and Independent Practice are essential in shifting the responsibility of learning to the student.
Collaborative Learning allows students to communicate and consolidate their understanding of learned concepts. Examples of collaborative learning opportunities include work stations or centers. The key to productive group lies in functionality of the task and accountability of all participants.
Independent Practice is precisely what it sounds like. The goal of teaching should be to create independent thinkers and learners. As such, this phase of the lesson and GRR process provides students with the opportunity to practice what is learned without the help of others or the teacher. This phase typical requires higher levels of cognition including synthesizing information and transforming ideas, making learning more concrete.
When effectively integrated into a lesson plan, gradual release of responsibility shows not only what is taught, but how. It shows what both the teacher does and the students. To make this component of an instructional plan especially effective, one could include approximate ranges of time for each phase of GRR as well.
Other helpful terms:
Anticipatory Set: Also known as a “hook”, the anticipatory set gets students focused on the lesson for the day and sometimes links previous learning with new learning. This part of the lesson is meant to be short, focusing students before the actual lesson begins.
Closure: As the label suggests, this is the final stage of the lesson that involves the teacher wrapping up the lesson in a final effort to check for understanding. Effective closure involves students thinking about what was learned and oftentimes involves questioning and discussion lead by the teacher.
Formative Assessment: Formative assessment includes the informal ways teachers check for understanding during instruction as opposed to after. Formative assessment takes many forms including observations of student collaboration activities and student work samples (Dodge, 2009). Formative assessments are different than summative assessments in that the latter is assessment of learning, indicating a more cumulative assessment of learning over a segment of time or unit of instruction. With formative assessments, teachers are assessing students for learning. When assessing students formatively, teachers gather student data through observation and collection of student artifacts to determine to what degree the lesson objectives are being met.
Assessment Guidance
This section includes additional specific assistance for excelling in the discussions for Week Five beyond what is given with the instructions for the assessments. If you have questions about what is expected on any assessment for Week Five, contact your instructor before the due date.
Discussion: Career and Technical Education
This discussion is another opportunity for you to demonstrate your mastery of the first course learning outcome; evaluate how the purposeful integration of technology in instruction and assessment supports student acquisition of 21st-century skills.
For this discussion, you will review 21st-century skills (refer to the Week Two Instructor Guidance for a review) and Career and Technical Education (CTE) as it relates to the principles of UDL. As well, you will investigate your state’s Department of Education or local school district’s website and their inclusion of CTE. This is a unique opportunity for you to get investigate what is currently in place in your own district or state regarding career and technical education. By adding this component to the discussion, you are able to make learning more directly relevant and applicable to what is occurring where you reside. Take your time when exploring your local school district or state department of education website so as to get a full picture of the direction being taken with regard to career and technical education.
Remember to follow the Guided Response prompt for this and every Discussion each week.
Assignment: Creating a UDL Instructional Plan
This fun assignment is another opportunity to demonstrate your mastery of the third course learning outcome; apply the principles of (UDL) in the design of instruction and assessment. Yet again, you have an opportunity to apply what you have learned in a meaningful way that can be transferred to your current or anticipated professional practice!
You will plan your content and design using the Cast UDL Lesson Builder (Links to an external site.)website. You will create a lesson for either Reading/Language Arts (ELA) or mathematics that includes the components listed in the content expectations for this assignment. While you may be tempted to construct a lesson that focuses on a subject matter other than ELA or math, it is expected that for the purpose of this assignment, you stick to the expectations only as these particular content areas are most likely to have solidified state standards.
Please note there are two parts to this assignment: Part I is an actual instructional plan and Part II is a summary. Additionally, consider what you learned in the earlier section of this week’s guidance concerning measurable learning objectives as it is an important part of the plan you design.
It is important to start with a specific grade-level content standard from either your own state standards or those from the Common Core State Standards (Links to an external site.)(CCSS). Notice that not every component of the lesson plan template you will build from the CAST UDL Lesson Builder will be utilized. The Methods (Teaching Methods) section can be supported by the information found earlier in the Instructor Guidance section titled Instructional Strategies: Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR).
The following provides a visual representation of the lesson plan template with each part labeled with what will and will not be used;
| Lesson Overview: All parts are required |
Before you construct Part I of the assignment, consider the reflection questions in Part II!
References
Association for Career and Technical Education. Retrieved from http://www.acteonline.org/general.aspx?id=120%20-%20%09.VFfWkIcXxR4
Dodge, J. (2009). 25 Quick formative assessments for a differentiated classroom. Scholastic Teaching Resources. Retrieved from http://store.scholastic.com/content/stores/media/products/samples/21/9780545087421.pdf.
Explore model UDL lesson plans. (2011) Retrieved from http://lessonbuilder.cast.org/explore.php
Fisher, D. (2008). Effective use of the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model. Retrieved from https://www.mheonline.com/_treasures/pdf/douglas_fisher.pdf.
Teaching Resources (2014). Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. Iowa State University. Retrieved from http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching-resources
