The Learning Element

Glenn Currie and I wrote a learning element based on a professional development workshop we attended on drug and alcohol education.  The session was facilitated by the author of a new resource that was being introduced into ACT schools called Challenges and Choices.  The professional development session was excellent and teachers were pleased to have new and innovative ideas and strategies to deliver drug and alcohol education to their classes.  Despite the fact that the lessons in these resources are sequential and in age appropriate bands, we felt that placing these ideas into the learning by Design structure would ensure the content is balanced and covers the experiencing, conceptualising,  analysing and applying fields. I have not had the opportunity to teach the learning element  because I have been in an office based position for the last 10 months but I can comment on the collaborative approach to planning using CG Learner and LbD.

Writing the Unit

Glenn and I are both passionate about Health and Physical Education so when the opportunity came to write this element we were both excited.  As we had both attended the workshop the previous week the principals for best practice and drug education were fresh in our minds.  One of the key discussions we had was that whenever teaching students about alcohol or drugs it is important to take a normative approach.  What I mean by this is that if you are discussing the use of ecstasy amongst 12 – 15 and the statistics tell us 97% don’t take the drug then it is important to reinforce this and not the fact that 3% of teenagers engage in this behaviour.  These discussions helped us focus on our approach to completing the placemat.  The activities and resources we used from the Challenges and Choice manual had to be framed in the context of a normative approach.  This would become more important later on when completing the teacher component of the LbD using CG Learner.  Planning on a placemat always provides a good visual to see if our activities flow and it if we are providing students opportunities to learn in all of the learning areas. 

CG Learner is a fantastic tool that allows us to easily transfer our ideas from the placemat to the LbD format.  At this point Glenn and I started to think more about the resources required for teachers to deliver this unit.  Again it is simple to add attachments to the program and we can develop our ideas and resources as we proceed.

Learner Diversity

As we know the students in our class learn at different speeds and have different capacity for knowledge.  Learning by Design allows students to work at individual levels if the teacher creates this environment.  There are opportunities for students to have choice in assessment tasks and particularly when applying their knowledge creatively.  At this point, students who have been participating in the unit of work can use the knowledge they have acquired and demonstrate this in a variety of creative ways.  Also, experiencing the new and known provides opportunities for students to learn about others in the class and their perspectives on different issues.  Alcohol and drug education is a sensitive issue and students from different cultural backgrounds will have diverse opinions about its role in society.  The strategies Glenn and I have chosen in our unit focus on small and large group discussion and debate.  We require students to explain their beliefs and thinking which further caters for diversity in the cohort.

Conclusion

Learning by Design is an essential and comprehensive process.  I like how the knowledge processes build on each other and that planning and writing of learning elements is sequential and flows.  The Placemat identifies gaps in your teaching and helps you think of ways to reach students using all of the learning areas.  CG Learner and the LbD philosophy has provided us with a multimodal approach to create lessons for our diverse and technology savvy students.

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