On February 14th, 2019, I worked with Danny Bakan and Marjean Brown and their cohorts to help uncover ‘big picture’ planning. We worked with the TCs to demonstrate the importance of the big picture and how we might weave in unique learning experiences as we plan for teaching. This was a valuable and enjoyable opportunity to share our understandings, processes and perspectives with the ABC and Indigenous Cohorts.
We began by participating in a model unique learning experience (aka: lesson) looking at intertidal life. This lesson was based on work we did last year with our colleague Bev Bunker. In this session, rather than looking at local plants as we did last year, we looked at artifacts from the seashore. Students were engaged in making observations, connecting to their experiences and considering the importance of the seashore (and place more generally) to local indigenous peoples and to us all as people who live in a coastal community. 
Marjean and I both shared some artifacts and perspectives from our own lives as we introduced the lesson and the students brought critical thinking (and humour) to their work. I hope not only that the students recognized the value of bringing together varied perspectives and engaging with our local context, but also saw how enjoyable it is to plan collaboratively!
Following this introductory activity, Danny shared an example of some Big Picture planning (aka: a Cross-curricular inquiry based Unit plan called “Wolves & Humans, Humans & Wolves” by Heather Dean, a teacher in Nelson BC). He helped us connect theory to practice by discussing Gardner (“not the best science but excellent pedagogy”) and worked to disrupt our notions of planning. Marjean then led us on an exploration of authentic indigenous resources after which I engaged students in some concept mapping as a model for how they (and their students) might brainstorm, connect ideas and begin planning.
To model the importance of student choice, we provided TCs with varied materials to support their brainstorming:
- varied sizes of paper
- Sticky notes
- templates
- markers, crayons, pencil crayons
- MindMup (online concept mapping software)
Thank you for sharing your time, ideas and questions with us. Below are the resources we used in the session:
- Session slides: Designing Learning_ big picture to unique experiences
- Learning Plan Example: Intertidal Life Inquiry_2019
- The template for this plan has key questions to support planning: Lesson Plan Template-prompts
- Padlet (digital tack-board)
- Designing Learning Blog UBC Teacher Ed Resource with planning templates and ideas on how to design effective big picture plans.
- Teach BC – open educational resources/lessons/units created by BC teachers.
- FNESC – first nations education steering committee authentic resource list
A few additional resource suggestions from Marjean:
- Strong Nations publishing and distributor of Indigenous Resource- https://www.strongnations.com
- Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd collaboration on stories- http://memoriestomemoirs.ca/#/publications
- First Peoples Principles of Learning blog by Joann Chrona- https://firstpeoplesprinciplesoflearning.wordpress.com
Please remember that we are more than happy to meet to discuss individual questions as they emerge for you at various stages in your own planning process!
To support this, as you may recall, the Scarfe Sandbox team (Yvonne and Janis) and the Education Library (Wendy and Emily) are hosting ‘Gearing up for Practicum’ planning consultations in Scarfe 155 in the library. If you sign up 2 business days in advance, the education librarians will pull resources based on the information you provide in the RSVP form. Visit the session calendar to view dates and to sign up: https://scarfedigitalsandbox.teach.educ.ubc.ca/sandbox-session-schedule/
You can also find some planning templates and resources on the Designing Learning Blog (co-developed by Yvonne and Clare Rushton in TEO). These are not mandated resources but have been gathered because we felt they were good examples of templates that might help in the planning process. Most have been developed by local school districts. In particular, I like that the Coquitlam Unit Overview/Planning process template has key questions that can/should be addressed as you design learning. It can be found on the Big Picture Planning page.
You will also find a link to Shelley Moore’s blog: BlogSomeMoore, if you are interested in looking more deeply into inclusive teaching/learning. Shelley’s blog includes some real, teacher created examples of inclusive learning maps as well as some templates.
Please note that we haven’t included in this post the work students developed during class as part of our interactivities (we didn’t ask student permisssion to share these publicly – so we sent them by email instead).
Cheers,
Yvonne Dawydiak @yvonnedtechtalk (with thanks to Marjean and Danny!)
