Welcome to Foundations of Teaching for Learning.

This is Week four: Putting curriculum to work,

Lecture two: Designing learning activities.

Curriculum is said as the sum-total of learning experiences

aimed at enhancing student achievement.

If that is the case,

let's start thinking about what kind of

learning experiences will bring student achievement

and what kind of context or

learning activities will provide the learning experiences that we are thinking about,

and what kind of learning activities will bring the enriching experience that will

come to the point where students feel

that they have successfully learned something that we are offering.

Talking about learning experiences,

as teachers I think it's always good if we could ask

ourselves to what extent it is purposeful,

it is continuous, it's interactive and integrating.

Here in the slide you will see Wheeler has given five points to ponder upon.

Based on these five points,

you can ask yourself that then your learning activities that you're creating

match this criteria given by Wheeler.

When we're designing learning activities,

there are many factors that can be taken into account.

There are also many criterias that can be used in designing learning activities.

In this slide, you see a number of images giving

many examples of creating learning activities.

Let's take a look at the one on fun.

When we create activities,

do we focus on the factor called fun?

Do we think about providing fun-filled experiences for our students?

We can also think about the variety.

Do we provide not only the indoor experiences but also experiences outside?

Do we create outdoor activities that can involve students in many ways?

Talking about criteria for learning activities,

it is always good for us to ask ourselves,

are the learning activities that I've created valid,

comprehensive, suitable and relevant to what I'm teaching?

And am I providing the variety the students they'd need and do I have certain pattern in

my teaching activities through which students can follow

and understand what I'm delivering?

Here in this slide,

you will see eight examples of learning activities.

Again, you may want to ask yourself are

the activities that you are creating giving opportunity for students to explore,

find out, experiment, investigate,

search, question and so on.

Or are you just merely repeating,

reciting, drilling what you have done all this while?

So there are number of ways in which we could create

learning activities and ask yourself where you are at this point.

The next question that is related to the learning activities that we talked about earlier

is how do I make these culturally and contextually appropriate for my students?

This is something very important for every teacher to pay attention to,

especially when we have students with diverse needs in the class coming

from multi-cultural backgrounds so they come with different experiences.

As teachers, it's very important for us to pay

attention to what they bring with them and try

to match the learning activities with

their experiences so there can be maximum learning happening in the class.

We have come to the final part of this lesson today.

With a colleague of yours you may want to ask what criteria

do I use when designing learning experiences for my students?

How do I use those criteria that evaluating students learning experiences?

To what extent are students aware of and use those criteria themselves?

Think about these questions and I shall see you in the next lecture.

Thank you very much.

Lecture 2: Designing Learning Activities

Foundations of Teaching for Learning: Curriculum

Conoce a los instructores