Session 2
Planning a Lesson (PAL) project:
What’s involved in creating an LBS lesson that flows?
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AlphaPlus Virtual Showcase - Spring 2024
June 18, 2024
Showcase Session 2: �What’s involved in creating an LBS lesson that flows?�
Session overview
~ 60 minutes
~ 15 minutes
Showcase Session 2: �What’s involved in creating an LBS lesson that flows?�
Also:
Showcase Session 2: �What’s involved in creating an LBS lesson that flows?�
Zoom tips
*** Use chat to ask questions or raise your hand…
Showcase Session 2: �What’s involved in creating an LBS lesson that flows?�
During the session
What’s involved in planning an LBS lesson that flows?
WARM-UP ACTIVITY
How do you know your lesson is flowing?
What’s involved in planning an LBS lesson that flows?
Let’s ask a more grounded question!
WARM-UP ACTIVITY
How do you know your lesson is flowing?
What’s involved in planning an LBS lesson that flows?
Let’s consider teaching with technology for learning–is flow impacted?
Let’s ask a more grounded question!
WARM-UP ACTIVITY
Is this lesson flowing?
The PAL Working Group’s First Discussion Activity
How and why we came together �as the Planning a Lesson (PAL) �working group…
Our online collaboration felt like a VIRTUAL STAFFROOM
Skills for Success—Enhancing Digital Delivery—Phase 1
Pandemic…
What are instructors’ needs now?
Identify current realities, needs and opportunities that could possibly inform a co-creation of useful and relevant resources.
2020
2021
2022
2023
PHASE 1—Digital Integration Focus Groups - Anglophone Stream
Engagement�(November 2022 - March 2023)
*Researcher also conducted informal discussions with �9 program administrators to gain an understanding of program delivery decisions/realities resulting from the pandemic shift to teaching online.
We meet regularly [online], …But it has been something where we're a lot more isolated, as instructors, …we're kind of siloed off from each other a bit more.
To be honest, one of the downfalls of the pandemic is teacher collaboration is just down. It's harder to see my colleagues because it's not the same shooting off an email, because I don't know how each specific colleague is doing, I don't know if she's busy.
If I see here face to face, I could say like 'Oh, what did you do in this class?’; ‘Are you doing this with this student?’ Even our professional development days are all online and I think sometimes that's a detriment to that interaction that we could have.
We do somewhat collaborate in Zoom and things like that, or at our staff meetings, but it's less lesson planning and more like a level up - like a big planning kind of thing, less lesson-y.
Sometimes I'll meet other teachers on MS Teams, and we'll collaborate that way. ... So it's different in the sense that we don't do it every day.
Missing the staffroom…
Reflecting on lesson planning… �Challenges, realities and variability
I can lesson plan something that goes successfully, or I can think about adding a video for whole-group discussion and it's successful. Then the same lesson bombs with another group… What’s a good lesson for one group does not always works well across the board.
I am trying to build learner autonomy when I create my lessons and think about how to have students learn to take the lead in their learning . That’s difficult when there’s so much complexity and students with such diverse experiences and backgrounds.
Lesson planning, I'm still working on how to do that in an online environment… My resources, pretty much determine what I do. I'm on Ultimate Phonics, we work through lesson by lesson because it's very sequential.
There are two different types of people in literacy: There are these people who create the wheel and then there are people who facilitate, and then there are some who can do both seamlessly and who love it.
“Traditionally, we always think about digital skills as just one dimension, or one skill area. But I think we really need to think about it almost three-dimensionally, where we have those other eight domains and they… all interact with each other. … I think that probably a lot of people still see the digital piece as being more of an isolated piece...
I know even a lot of the students that are coming to us …they're coming thinking, ‘Oh, I need to learn digital skills. I don't need to worry about reading or writing or numeracy. I need digital skills.’ But digital skills are reading and writing and numeracy—it's all integrated with the other stuff…”
LBS instructor reflecting on digital skills in today’s digital learning space
Being learner-centred honours the fact that our digital world really does call for integrated and contextualized instruction rooted in digital practices.
PHASE 2:
Time for a grassroots, virtual staffroom!!!
Why lesson planning?
How we explored the intricacies of lesson planning by considering:
FLOW:
Optimal Engagement
Anxiety / Frustration*
F L O W*
Boredom / Apathy*
Skill
Challenge
Flow happens when there is a balance between challenge and skill, which makes for optimal engagement.
*
Introducing a new activity/task during the lesson
Optimal Engagement
Overwhelmed, fear and worry activated, too challenging, feels disjointed, lack of clarity, self-conscious, possible shutdown
No challenge, stuck in the same-old type of activity, lacks meaning, no intrinsic motivation, distractions come easy, time-filler activities
Action and awareness merge, no worry of failure, self-consciousness disappears, sense of time distorts, activity is a meaningful end in itself, fully immersed in task/activity
Movement of the lesson
TOO HARD / RUSHED / TOO NEW
JUST RIGHT
ROTE / MEANING- LESS
A FINE BALANCE FOR LESSON FLOW
Internal experience / emotions of learners
Point at which a new activity, digital tool, or task is introduced
Movement of lesson engagement
Adapted from Peter Liljedah’s Flow: A Framework for Discussing Teaching.
Based on the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 2008.
PAL’s Guiding Questions
A Thinking Routine for Purposeful Lesson Planning
Breakout Room Activity
We’ll have you work on the very first questions in our thinking routine…
(~ 15 minutes)
A taste of our Guiding Questions…
PRE-LESSON—BREAKOUT BRAINSTORM!!!
DAILY LBS SCENARIO: Arriving to class—be it remotely or in a face-to-face setting—can be stressful for LBS learners who find themselves in new situations, are back to learning after a long gap, juggle life demands, or are unsure of how to navigate being a student, and how to navigate in our increasingly digital world. ACTIVITY: Reflect on these and other realities you face. Answer the following:
KEY QUESTION: What issues can impact the flow of a lesson before it even begins?
Consider digital bottlenecks (e.g. technology issues) and affective bottlenecks (i.e. emotions/feelings of learners as they) that your learners face.
Bottleneck (n.): something or someone that slows or halts flow, movement and progress
Showcase Session 2: �What’s involved in creating an LBS lesson that flows?
DEBRIEF/DISCUSSION
Let’s check out the
Pre-Lesson Flow Companion the PAL working group developed from the very question you used in your breakout brainstorming!
PAL Reflections…
Let’s hear from each working group member (~3 minutes each):
Valuable insight…�Are we using technology to do something new or are we using technology to do the same tired lessons on a digital platform?
Valuable insight…�What can you do with technology that you can’t do in a traditional classroom?
Showcase Session 2: �What’s involved in creating an LBS lesson that flows?
Questions?
Showcase Session 2: �What’s involved in creating an LBS lesson that flows?
Resources
The website will be ready at the end of the month. �We will share the link when it will be available.
Showcase Session 2: �What’s involved in creating an LBS lesson that flows?
Thank you!
Session 3 - Tuesday, October 22
Session 4 - Tuesday, November 19
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