Planning for Learner Success - Planning Ahead

Pre-Planning Facilitation Materials

5 minutes*

Step 1: Considering the Use of Facilitation Resources for Your Project

Teacher and learner roles are different in a learner-centred, project-based classroom.

In this activity, you consider how ICT can support you and your learners as you transition to these new roles. You then plan for a facilitation resource to support your role as a facilitator.

As you move from conventinal teacher to facilitator, you need to hone your skills in helping learners construct their own learning. Use the results from this self-assessment to help plan the facilitation materials you create in Module 7.

1. Review the Differentiation and ICT Worksheet. Using the questions in the first column, conduct a quick self-assessment of your behaviours, classroom climate, and project implementation strategies that support a learner-centred classroom.
   
   
2. In the second column, add to the ideas listed for how ICT could possibly help you become more of a facilitator and make your classroom more learner-centred.
   

Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock, in Classroom Instruction that Works (2001, p. 146), discuss teaching strategies that teachers should include in the various stages of a project:

• At the beginning of a project, include strategies for setting learning goals
  
  
• During a project, include strategies for:
  
  
  • Monitoring progress toward learning goals
    
    
  • Introducing new knowledge
    
    
  • Practicing, reviewing, and applying knowledge
    
    
• At the end of a project, include strategies for helping learners determine how well they have achieved their goals

These facilitation strategies support the learning process and mirror the assessment strategies addressed in Module 2. Review the ideas for following materials and consider how these strategies could be supported technologically in your project.

Click here to see the Examples of Facilitation Materials

If you are collaborating with other teachers on your Project Portfolio, discuss how you can best work as a team on this planning activity. Consider using a collaboration website, such as those referenced in the Online Collaborative Sites.

Step 2: Brainstorming Facilitation Materials

Using the ideas presented in Step 1, brainstorm ideas for facilitation materials that would help you to be more efficient, aid learner learning, and implement your project.

1. Review your facilitation self-assessment and choose areas you would like to emphasize more frequently in your classroom.
   
   
2. What are some possible facilitation materials you could create to address these areas?

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