Sketch of PD at Daraja for 5 sessions

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Friday, January 8, Session 1
  • Teachers, there will be a LOT of information in these next five sessions, but we will also have practice time.  We are going to engage in a process of reflection, learning, practice, and reflection (individually and with others).  What I am also recommending is that this be broken up, just as you do with your students into three terms.  Term 1:  Reflect and Learn.  Term 2:  Planning and Practice.  Term 3:  Reflect and Learn.  
  • Open up your email.  
  • Go to Edmodo.com and establish an account with your email address and a new password you won't forget.  Email yourself the password.  
  • Sign up for Edmodo as teachers and using the code that I give you, join the Daraja Group.  
    • Please do an initial post in the Daraja Forum that lists your subject area and one thing that you love about teaching at Daraja.  I will also assign you to the small groups subject groups from that post.  
    • Administrators, I will add you to all of the groups.  
  • Take some time to cruise around the site.  What do you notice?    After sharing out, we will go through some of the fine details around Edmodo.  
  • With Edmodo, you can share resources with one another, create classes for students and give feedback (the grading function does not fit with the Kenyan context), and also get information/connect with teachers around the world.  
  • We will be using Edmodo as our Platform to learning together.  
  • Flipped classroom
    • Defining as a whole group based on the video
    • We are using a mini-version of this model
      • to give you the practical experience with it as a student (interacting with the site and materials),
      • to address the time crunch that we have,
      • to differentiate instruction (to hit the needs of as many of you as possible.  If you need more time with a section, you can go back to it.), 
      • to mroe effectively prepare us as a group to ask the important questions around teacher use.  
    • Challenges:  
      • Technical ability
        • It is totally alright to feel overwhelmed.  It is not alright to give up.  You wouldn’t let any Daraja girl give up, so why would you?  This is the YEAR OF PERFORMANCE!  You are already strong teachers; we are just adding to your strength.  
        • Start with what you know and then build.  
        • Work with another teacher to use the tech or build the project.  Two minds ARE better than one.  
      • Recognize that there will be failures with the tech (network down at just the time you need it), not anticipating a student misconception, etc.
        • Know, too, that you are a professional who knows the content and the art and science of teaching.  
        • When you have everything, you teach with everything.  When you nothing, you teach with everything YOU have.  
      • Recognize that doing anything new and out of our comfort zone is anxiety producing and requires a lot of extra effort with teachers who already do SO much.  
        • Know, too, that you don’t have to do it all at once OR all alone. 
    • Want to learn more about the Flipped Classroom?  I am happy to work with teachers on creating short videos to introduce important topics.  You also don't have to reinvent the wheel.  
  • Project Based Learning
Monday, January 11, Session 2
  • Start out the session reviewing in Thinking Pairs using Academic Conversation (Zwier and Crawford) what the teachers learned and what they want to learn
  • Let’s talk about the those questions that you had in your thinking pairs, if they were answered or if we can answer them as a group.  
  • STARTING OUR UNITS 
    • Start out with the big ideas.  In your case, the big ideas are already identified for you, so I want you to pick one topic that is just begging for a real life application.  
      • Why does this topic matter?  This is an entry point into the essential question.  
    • Using the Google Doc, that I have just posted, fill in the information as we go.  
      • You will need to go to File
    • You will need to go to File
      • Select Make a Copy
      • Name your copy with your name
      • Click on Share with same people.  
      • We will be working on the sections in Blue.  
    • Traits and examples of essential questions. Quick Video:  Teaching Channel:  What is an essential question?  
          • Cause genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas of the core content
          • Provoke deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions
          • Require students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers.
          • Stimulate vital ongoing rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, prior lessons.
          • Spark meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences
          • Naturally recur, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations
        • EXAMPLES MIGHT BE
          • How are people transformed through their relationships with others?
          • How do competing notions of what a utopian society should look like lead to conflict?
          • What is the relationship between freedom and responsibility?
          • Is humankind inherently good or evil?

      • Work in pairs to develop an essential or driving question.  Type it into the Doc.  
    • Now, what knowledge and skills would the students need to answer that question.  
    • PRODUCT SECTION
      • How will you assess that they can do this work?  How will they perform their understanding?  How will they apply it?  
    • How will you assess that they can do this work?  How will they perform their understanding?  How will they apply it?
       
  • EXTENSION
    • For the next session, continue to consider what you would have to teach to prepare them to answer those questions.
      • What are they going to create with this knowledge?  How will they apply it.
      • Remember you are teaching for meaning and transfer.  
      • Who is the audience (other than you)?  
Tuesday, January 12, Session 3
  • Remember that question I asked:  Why does it matter?  
  • This is the part where you think about how to hook your students.  It could be a video, a visit to a nearby conservancy, a walk around campus.  
    • Macgyver is a guy who always gets into trouble, but he always finds his way out using his knowledge of math and science.  
    • Here’s a clip of Macgyver … and here’s a clip of Macgyver and his son.  
      • But what is there was a Daraja girl who out Macgyvered Macgyver.  Wouldn’t that be a cool TV show?  
      • Turns out that just this summer, there was a search for such a show to be proposed.  Without looking at which show is going to be produced, how would a Daraja girl solve a similar problem that benefits her community?  
        • Select 1 from these 3 options.  (Here's the complete List of Problems Macgyver Solved)
          • Problem 1:  You have attained a position as a health services manager after your internship in a hospital.  While you do not have any direct interaction with patients any longer, you are responsible for the smooth-running organization.  You miss that interaction, though, particularly your work with cardiac patients.  All that training will come in handy now.  An older colleague with a weak heart starts to show the symptoms of a heart attack.  She is sweating, grabbing at her left side, and feels like she can hardly breath.  She falls to the floor quickly and stops breathing.  You know how to start her heart with a defibrillator, but the nearest one is two floors down and in the medical offices wing.  You won't make it in time, and you are the only one there.  You know that you can make a defibrillator, but how?
            • Macgyver actually solved this in Season 1, Episode 15, The Enemy Within:  
              • "He later uses two candlestick holders, a floor mat, and an electrical powercord as a makeshift defibrillator to revive a fallen comrade."
          • Problem 2:  You have just come home for holidays from your position as an engineer.  You settle in to relax surrounded by family.  Unfortunately, there has lately been a great deal of rain and wind, the strongest you've ever heard.  A nearby home collapses nearby.  You run over.  You can hear a baby inside.  From your engineering experience, you know that you can get to the family there through going through a particular wall, but you have two things against you.  This house has been reinforced with chicken wire and a significant disturbance will upset the entire building.  How would you save the child and family?  How would you construct a house that can withstand any weather?  
            • Macgyver goes through a wall enforced with chicken wire in Season 1, Episode 16, Everytime she smiles.
              • "MacGyver uses two coat hangers (attached in a metallic square-knot to look like a "figure 8"), a wooden chair, and the conveyor belt just outside his room to break through the chicken-wire in the wall. (The conveyor belt pulls the hangers, which are attached to the chair, and pulls it through the wall)."
          • Problem 3:  For your imagination!  
          • Propose a solution.  
          • Draft a proposal for the solution
          • Create a short video that shows the solution in practice for Part 1 and in Part 1 shows what scientific principles are at play.  
            • This example would take three days (Wednesday through Friday to teach the science and have work time or Thursday and Friday for the science and introducing the project and Monday for finalizing the videos and explanation/presenting in class) and the weekend with iPod Touches to make the videos and upload them.  
          • The following Monday during tutorial time, the students of that Form could vote on which group presented the strongest science and engineering.  
        • This lesson would connect to Form 2 standards and scheme: History. 10.26 Telecommunication; English. Listening and Speaking; Chemistry. Structure of the atom and the periodic table (discuss the procedure for derving the chemical formulae of compounds; Derive chemical formulae of compounds)
      • Time to find videos to introduce the topic in your PBL and brainstorm ideas.  
      • Tonight:  identify one entry event that would really bring the topic and question to life for the students.  Place this in the Google Doc in Orange.   You will also complete the sections on materials needed, reflection methods, the "why does it (learning this topic) matter (in real life)?" section, AND the Project Design Learning Guide 
    Wednesday, January 13, Session 4
    • Share out some of those ideas about entry events.  
    • Craft a project summary now (highlighted in yellow).  What do you want the students to learn and be able to accomplish?  What products will they produce and how will you assess them?  How will they assess themselves?  
    • Another key part of PBL is choice and voice. 
    • Go back to your PBL unit and make sure that you have created space for multiple perspectives and for students to be active learners.  At this point, go back and think through what lessons you might teach in 2 or 3 days or over 2 weeks.  
    Thursday, January 14, Session 5
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    A delayed recounting of the journey to Daraja