I created four interconnected websites so students could work together across grade-levels, yet have access to the grade-level, curriculum-heavy, material that they required. The first website, Learning with Miss D, is my umbrella site, housing both student and parent information. It has a custom URL so that students would be able to quickly type it into a variety of devices, and the QR Code to the right was posted on ClassroomScreen to allow students to scan and jump right in.
Students in the same grade have a wide range of abilities in different areas. As this unit was integrated, I had to consider student strengths in all strands of the English program, math, science, and technology. However, in addition to teaching two grades, I teach three students with Individual Programming requirements. Google ReadWrite was invaluable in allowing my created content to be accessible to all students, but it wasn't enough. I created differentiated folders to make daily delivery of content quicker and invisible to students.
Each day every student received an individual Top Secret task page. The Top Secret page had their character information, the date, their daily tasks, and the information they know.
The tasks were differentiated by student (light grey in the top right) and the information they knew was often unique.
26 students participating x 10 days + 1 example page = 261 Top Secret task pages
Approximately 150 unique clues and/or red herrings given.
At the top of the task page was a checklist for students to complete. There were a variety of tasks always chosen from the following categories: Reading & Viewing, Speaking, Science, Math, Writing & Representing. My early finishers and top students had more tasks and more difficult tasks to complete.
26 Top Secret task pages x minimum of 6 tasks = 156+ tasks to prep nightly
261 Top Secret task pages x average of 8 tasks per page = 2088+ tasks to prep over the unit
The Unit was constructed with Backwards Design. The outcomes chosen were integrated into the websites created and the tasks to complete.
Math: measurement (mass and capacity focus), graphing (pictographs, bar graphs, double bar graphs)
English: all outcomes, organized by strand
Science: all unit outcomes
Grade 4: Earth and Space Science: Rocks, Minerals, and Erosion
Grade 5: Physical Science: Properties of and Changes in Materials
Daily planning was relatively simple; I planned to show the created videos, remind students of the daily expectations, and give them a quick tour of the sites they'd need to use.
My daily slideshow follows my daily plan. It is where the bulk of my planning time goes. It allows students to have a visual of each time block I plan for. The slideshow has centres rotations, timers, student names, my bitmoji, instructions and directions, QR codes, and other information as needed.
I digitized the MSLQ survey, as found in Pintrich and DeGroot's 1990 paper Motivational and Self-Regulated Learning Components of Classroom Academic Performance. This allowed me to quickly gather pre-unit and post-unit results of motivation, engagement, and independence. The results of the survey will be discussed on the evaluation page.
I used a variety of technology new to this unit daily: iPads, Chromebooks, Microsoft Desktop Computers, Google Sites, Google Forms, Google Docs, Google Classroom, FlipGrid, QR Code Generators, ClassroomScreen, YouTube, EdPuzzle, Nearpod, PhET Simulations, and other sites and technology less frequently. This unit could not have existed without each of these technologies working together. Last year, this unit was straight out of the textbook, with a few worksheets and reading materials added. Students enjoyed the content, but in terms of Schlecty's levels of engagement, most would have been ritual compliance. This unit allowed me to turn the tables; most students were fully engaged in the content, the mystery, or both.