On November 7, I had the opportunity to team teach a Biology 11 class with Thomas. We pitched the idea to the teacher, and she was kind enough to hand over the whole 80 minute block to us to teach exactly what we wanted. We planned a class that was multimodal, engaging, and included the principles of multiliteracy learning.

For our lesson, we started with a powerpoint presentation in order to review the previous classes information, and confirm that all students had the necessary information to participate in the lesson. Throughout the powerpoint we asked many questions and had time for casual conversation and discussion. This stage of the lesson was what we considered the overt instruction, which “guide[d] students to the systematic practices of learning processes with tools and techniques.” (Biswas, S, 2014). Once we made it through that information, we invited the students to join us at the back of the room for story time. As we learned in class, teaching through stories is a great way to introduce a new modality. We decided that having a physical change of location would increase engagement, and it seemed to work well. The students then returned to their seats for instructions for the activity, and to be separated into groups. They were to work in groups of four to create a sasquatch that survived 1000 generations after a major event changed their lifestyles. They had several tasks to complete, and were very creative. This activity allowed the students to apply what they learned creatively. Applying Creatively is important because it is a way of assessing how much students understood from the lesson, it “is a Knowledge Process which takes knowledge and capabilities from one setting and adapts them to quite a different setting” (Cope and Kalantzis, 2009). Learning about adaptations and evolution in real organisms, and applying that to an imaginary creature is fun and informative.

Once they did that, they shared their sasquatch with the class, and returned to their seats. We then took some time to talk about natural selection and evolution, and had the students discuss with a partner how likely the adaptations for their sasquatch would be. We finished the lesson with a casual debate, having the students try to convince their classmates if the sasquatch is fictional or real.

We planned this lesson to be multimodal. First of all, we had the visual of the powerpoint presentation. We taught through story-telling (insert source on storytelling). We had overt instruction by clearly explaining expectations and instructions, and then allowed the students to apply creatively in by inventing a fictional character. After they applied creatively, we had the students explain why they had the adaptations, applying creatively. The class experienced the known by talking about real life examples of mutations (redheads, specialized birds and insects, cancer, etc), and then some students experienced the unknown as we had students in the class who had never heard of the sasquatch.

In the end, we had a lot of fun. The students seemed to understand our goal, and did well with the review questions at the end, as well as having very creative sasquatches, and being able to explain and justify the adaptations. Although they seemed shy at the beginning, the lesson went well and we had great feedback from the teacher.

By teaching this lesson, I learned a lot. First, I learned firsthand how teaching with multiliteracies in mind was successful. Even the students in the class who may not be traditionally academic, and the ELL students with low English abilities were able to participate fully in the creative aspect of the lesson. They had to write a description, but because they were in a group, the person who was most comfortable wrote while the other students told them their ideas. Most of the class participated well, which I felt very happy about. Second, including different activities and modalities increased student engagement visibly – different students excelled in different aspects of the lesson. During the powerpoint part, a few students were very engaged, and answering all of the questions, during the story time it was other students who sat at the front and participated in the story. The drawing involved a different group again, and in the debate almost ALL of the students had something to say. We picked a topic that was silly and fun, yet still relevant to end the class on a high note! Not everything went as planned, though. We had a lot of questions prepared, most pretty easy to keep the class participating, but the students seemed very shy they weren’t overly interested in answering us. After talking to some teachers, they recommended starting the class with a little ice breaker, something to help the students be a bit more comfortable with us. We also forgot to provide the students with a plan for the day, and learning intentions. As a student, I always like knowing what the class will look like, and in the future, I will remember to include that in my lesson. Overall, teaching the class made me excited for our future!

References:

Biswas, S. (2014). How to teach multiliteracies. Canadian Journal for teacher research. 1, 38-46

Cope, W. and Kalantzis, M. (2009) “Multiliteracies”: New Literacies, New Learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4:3, 164-195, DOI: 10.1080/15544800903076044