After receiving feedback and taking time to reflect on UDL and intersectionality, I'm proud to share my final Innovative Learning Plan (ILP). Initially, I designed this lesson for
my 8th grade students for this upcoming school year. I realized, first hand, the power of gamification in education and the motivation it can bring to content. Most of my students are regular gamers, social media users, and look up to influencers. When something isn't "cool" it becomes difficult to sell or engage students at the middle school level. Therefore, I gathered up some resources, tinkered around with tech tools a bit myself, and began brainstorming how to create an engaging lesson enhancing my students' classroom experience. I'm no expert, but have loved taking time to experiment with MakeyMakey. After a few YouTube videos, I knew this was the tech tool to re-engage my students in Scratch and challenge their different abilities. But, did I know their abilities?
About the Lesson
Before we dive into UDL, intersectionality, and critiquing my plan, I want to paint a quick picture for you to visualize the layout of this lesson.
If this lesson sounds like a fit for your classroom, I encourage you to further explore my ILP, see page 6.
Feedback and Changes
Feedback is incredibly powerful and, as educators, I believe we must embrace, reflect on and model how to use feedback to grow. Reading the positive comments about my thought-out rubrics is very reassuring how taking time on the little things can pay off.
I learned how feedback can be so powerful, but also difficult to interpret when our experiences and perspectives can be so diverse. Reviewing and analyzing my peers' feedback was refreshing and empowering. I felt supported and challenged helps me grow and continue taking risks as I let my imagination and sense of creativity drive my ideas outside the comfort zone.
Below you can see the feedback and suggestions I received from my peers. Uniquely, you can see how one peer provided feedback specifically from a UDL perspective while another was through the lens of a student who has a learning disability. Their feedback really challenged me to consider different lenses as I create more lesson plans moving forward.
A few changes I made based on feedback include:
Creating an option for students not as familiar with Scratch to use their choice of an online tool to create their Review Game on
Providing opportunities for group collaboration and brainstorming
Specific step-by-step directions for the lesson (note: directions will be on Schoology in both visual and audio formats)
I chose to modify my original plan because I didn't consider students who need more processing time, might be overwhelmed with too many tools, cannot read directions, or do not speak English. It is important to meet the needs of all my students and their unique abilities. On the other hand, I felt the need to disregard some feedback because I do know my students. I can encourage students to use Scratch for their Review Game, but can differentiate the rigor for their Review Game based on my observations and genuine conversations.
MakeyMakey and Gamification
Choosing the right technology is not only intimidating to teachers, but overwhelming. The various tech resources, websites, tutorials and ads are endless and can make a teacher more resistant toward technology. I chose to use MakeyMakey because I'm continuously in awe of the coolest projects and videos I've seen and been able to create myself. Whether DDR using Scratch, typing an email, or playing Pong, I have loved the fun aspect of learning to code and utilize technology to enhance instruction. My focus was utilizing technology cross-curriculum to support the review process, and MakeyMakey was the perfect way to gamify this instructional experience. Whether deaf, Latino, a foster-child, living in poverty, or nonbinary, when teachers can gamify instruction, there are additional experiences and opportunities, for students and teachers, to engage with instruction and represent their learning (Fernandez-Rio et. al, 2020).
Resources:
Fernandez-Rio, J., de las Heras, E., González, T., Trillo, V., & Palomares, J. (2020). Gamification and physical education. Viability and preliminary views from students and teachers. Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, 25(5), 509–524. https://doi-org.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/10.1080/17408989.2020.1743253
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