Orsborn Masters Portfolio

Quality content keeps kids engaged and my Maps Unit did just that. The title of my unit

was Where in The World Do I Go to School? The focus of the unit was for students to identify

where they live, how they find their way around their local community, and the understanding

that they are a part of a bigger and bigger picture when comparing town, county, state, country,

continent, and world. The students learned how to find their way around using a map, the

cardinal directions, and a compass. Students had to locate where they live on a state map and

identify the countries in North and South America including the oceans that touch the borders.

Students learned the importance of borders, from local townships to countries, and gained an

understanding to why we have them. The unit was built using Understanding by Design, or

backward design.

The choice of using backward design was made because the students had a basic

understanding of the world, which allowed me to use prior knowledge to teach the lessons in the

unit. In the book Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005) say,

“Backward design provides a useful framework to help teachers identify teaching and learning

priorities and guide the design of the curriculum and assessments” (p. 13). This statement is

important because the unit starts with a pre-test to see what the kids know, what they need to

learn to meet the standards, and how as a class we will get there. In an article written by Larry

Hurtubise and Brenda Roman (2014), the authors state, “The emphasis on defining assessment

methods prior to developing teaching/learning activities is the key: this ensures that assessment

(where the learner should be at the end of the educational activity/process) drives instruction and

that assessment and learning/instruction are tightly linked to help ensure achievement of

competency by the learner” (p. 165).

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These students had a basic understanding of the world. They knew they lived in North

Dakota, and that was in the United States, and that was in North America. They didn’t fully

understand how all that worked, and the image they had of each was very different.

Furthermore, the students knew what a map was but didn’t understand how to use it, what its

components were, or how it could help them find their way somewhere. To me that meant the

content needed to be real and usable. According to Weiyun Chen, Austin Hammond-Bennett,

Ashley Upton, and Steve Mason (2014), “Quality teaching implies that learning tasks should be

academically rigorous and progressively connected” (p. 321). The authors go on to say, “Task

presentation should be relevant and meaningful to students, and the learning environment should

be supportive and productive for students to actively build knowledge and apply what they have

learned to solve problems in authentic settings (p. 321). This is exactly what my unit was able to

provide. The projects in the unit were hands on learning which is beneficial to everyone. The

content the students needed to learn came from a lot of questions and answers. The students

asked a lot of questions during all the lessons, this is important because it allowed us as a group

to dig deeper into areas that were new and go a little faster on things everyone understood.

Using adaptive teaching methods, I was able to keep the students interested, focused, and on

task. As we covered maps and how to read them, students were excited to answer questions like

the cardinal directions. Everyone remembered how to set it up and that was the first thing

covered.

As we progressed through the unit, students were excited for each new lesson. The

lessons were scaffolded so there was always use of prior knowledge. Students worked together

on all projects which allowed those that got it quick, to help those that were slower on the

concepts. Allowing the students to work together created a new learning environment within
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each lesson. According to Melony Holyfield Allen, Catherine Matthews, and Seth Parsons

(2013) “Based upon the work of Dewey and Vygotsky, social constructivism posits that learners

actively construct knowledge through social interactions within a specific context” (p. 115). By

the students working together and using previous knowledge, they were learning without

realizing that it was work.

In the end, when the unit was assessed, two students scored in the sixty percent range, not

passing, the rest of the class was seventy-five percent and over. The two students that did not

pass, really didn’t try. However, the whole class wanted more of the mapping lessons. There

were two reasons the students liked the unit so much. The first reason they liked it so much was

the content was real, something that was tangible and useable in life. The second reason was

they were able to work together and learn from each other. Nicole L. Ennen, Emily Stark, and

Andrea Lassiter (2015) state, “Using groups in the classroom has proven to be an effective

technique, particularly in higher education: past research has shown that collaborative learning

leads to higher quality learning, improved student relationships, better retention of material,

deeper understanding of course content, and higher academic performance” (p. 616). As a

student teacher, I learned more in that three-week period about how kids learn than I did in any

book I had ever read. Kids want good content, they want real, useful material, and they want to

work together. Using these strategies allowed me to connect with these kids and it allowed them

to have an enjoyable experience in learning about maps.

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References

Chen, W., Hammond-Bennett, A., Upton, A., and Mason, S. (2014). Accomplished Teachers’

Implementation of Quality Teaching Practices. The Physical Educator 71(2) 320-343.

Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uas.alaska.edu

Ennen, N.L., Stark, E., and Lassiter, A. (2015). The importance of trust for satisfaction,

motivation, and academic performance in student learning groups. Social Psychology of

Education 18(3) 615-633. doi 10.1007/s11218-015-9306-x Retrieved from

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds

Holyfield Allen, M., Matthews, C.E., Parsons, S.A. (2013). A second-grade teacher’s adaptive

teaching during an integrated science-literacy unit. Teaching and Teacher Education

35(2013) 114-125. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2013.06.002 Retrieved from

https:www.elsevier.com/locate/tate

Hurtubise, L. and Roman, B. (2014). Competency-Based Curricular Design to Encourage

Significant Learning. Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care 44(6)

164-169. doi.org/10.1016/j.cppeds.2014.01.005 Retrieved from

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds

Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2005). Understand by Design (2nd Ed.). Alexandria, VA:

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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