Section 1.3 Learning Sequence Design
This learning sequence is part of the Civics and Citizenship year 9 Curriculum. The learning sequence fits into the sub-strand of Citizenship, diversity and identity. Overall in this unit, students engage in discussions, activities and dialogic teaching to examine how a range of media helps shape identity and attitudes towards diversity and impacts social cohesion. The learning sequence that will be explored here comes towards the end of the unit. Students collaborate to investigate a human rights campaign that uses social media and explore how members of the public engage with the campaign. Their task is to create media content to add to the campaign, using a range of media forms. To complete this task, students collaborate with other students and authentic stakeholders to explore positive and negative perspectives and outcomes around the particular media rights campaign. Digital technology supports collaboration, engages community members, and provides form of multi-modal presentation. See “My Experience of Pedagogy”, and “My Pedagogy Map” for underlying pedagogy. |
Using the
Six Hats to Analyse a Human Rights Campaign Blue Hat: What thinking is
needed, identifies what needs to be done to carry out task, and plans for
action. White Hat: Finds
information and facts about the Campaign such as who is the founder, what is
the purpose and aim, what political or community affiliations does it have,
where does it receive funding. Red Hat: Discussing
feelings. How do you feel about the efforts of this organisation, do you like
or dislike it? Yellow Hat: Thinks about
what is positive about the work of this organisation, how does it benefit a
group and increase social cohesion? Black Hat: Thinks about
disadvantages, dangers and problems. Identifies negative view points, and
negative or polarising effects on social cohesion Green
Hat: New ideas, creating, adapting and innovating. Fixing problems identified
by Black hats. Fig 1: DeBono's Six Hat's - Categorising thoughts
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Students are familiarised with Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking hats (See Fig 1). Students are already familiar with wikis, but will be reminded of protocols.
Students are asked to share media campaigns they were asked to look up in a previous class online. Students go online and find the media campaigns they have identified. They connect to the class projector to share what they have found with the class. As they share, the teacher facilitates discussion, and asks students to add their thoughts and ideas into a class Wikispace page scaffolded with Edward DeBono’s six thinking hats (See Fig. 1). One student is tasked with adding each media campaign that is discussed to a Kahoot poll.
Phase 2
Students access poll and choose their top 6 campaigns. Kahoot poll results are projected, and the teacher incorporates the names of these campaigns onto their Wiki-space where six pages have already been set up, with one page per campaign, scaffolded by the DeBono Thinking Hats. Every student is asked to research one or two of the campaigns which they are interested in (either individually or in pairs) and make a more substantial contribution to at least two different thinking hats across or on the same campaign page. Students split into small groups. Each group is assigned to work on a particular campaign. Each group assigns a “blue-hat” thinker who is in charge of managing the page, and can choose to assign particular hats to each member, or share roles.
In phase one and two, students engage in authentic collaboration, which allows them to determine, within reason, the direction of their learning. They engage with real-life problem which engages higher order thinking and builds knowledge.
Phase 3:
Groups continue to research and add notes to their Wikispace page. Each group is asked to identify an authentic stakeholder to interview. This individual may be a founder or contributor to a campaign, or a member of the group impacted by the campaign. Students are then assisted to contact stakeholders and to set up interviews with the particular stakeholder, using video communications technology such as Skype where possible, or phone interviews/ face-to-face. Before the interview students come up with pertinent questions, and add these on to their wiki page. During the interview, one student is responsible for note-taking, categorising opinions, if possible, into the scaffolded table on Wikispace page. Students may ask for permission and record the interview to include portions in their media campaign.
This phase allows for further collaboration now with authentic stakeholders within the community, which allows students to identify real experiences about how the media campaign or issue has impacted members of society, and engage with real-life problems. Students learn about how personal experiences can differ from overall opinions, facts and statistics.
Phase 4:
After collaborating with stakeholders, each group applies what they have learned to refining their ideas and beginning to work on their additions to the media campaign. First, they work together to refine their ideas in their green and blue thinking hats. They identify areas of improvement within the media campaign, and come up one-two artefacts to complement and enhance the existing campaign.
Teacher introduces the technological tools mentioned in Section 1.2; photo editors, animation creators and meme generators, and ensures students have the tools and skills to support how they wish to express their creativity and present knowledge. Students have to use at least one of these tools in the presentation of their ideas.
This phase supports and assists students in using different forms of communication and media to present knowledge. As they identify areas to improve in existing media campaigns, they develop analytical and critical thinking capacities, and think about ethical issues. The task overall helps them to think about how they can work for the social progress of themselves and others, and ensure that the rights of different groups of individuals are being respected.