Teaching SS Skills - Hybrid (Comparison + Surprise)
Taught hybrid for the first time and wanted to learn how to better teach the skill, so thank you Ms Tang for letting me observe the lesson! 🙏🏻 Some post-lesson thoughts:
It may be obvious to me (as the teacher) that the question below is one that involves the skills of comparison & surprise, but students may not see it as clearly. I thought that the way Ms Tang annotated the question was a very visual and effective way of signalling to the students of the skills involved:
To help guide students in their inference, Ms Tang also got students to refer to the issue question (Is Singapore ready to deal with climate issues?) and consider:
What are the climate issues - i.e. the PROBLEMS
What has been done (by individuals, government, etc.) - i.e. the SOLUTIONS
This could be a good 'frame' students can apply to unpacking other topics as well.
When concluding whether the source is surprising, an approach students can take (after comparing the messages of the two sources) is to see how the 2 sources are related. E.g. for this particular source-based question, they are related in the sense that Source F is a RESPONSE to Source E.
Hence, even though they have contrasting messages (E = Singapore's recycling rates are low; F = Singapore's recycling rates are high), Source F can still be unsurprising since it talks about the follow up actions taken to mitigate the issues raised in Source E.
Harnessing Technology for Geography - Infographic
Contributed to the Sept 2023 issue of GEM!, a quarterly publication by the CPDD Geography Unit.
I took the opportunity to reflect on how I have used tech in my classroom, while ensuring its meaningful application. (Courtesy of the many tech nuggets from fellow teachers in the Humanities Department!)
View the infographic here: link
Social Studies Issue Investigation (SSII) 2023 - Reflections
Context
The inquiry question for this year's II remained as "Are there sufficient support given to meet the needs of people with disabilities in Singapore?" Students looked into the experiences of 3 groups of people with disabilities (PWDs) - people with physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities and mental health issues).
One change this year is that students produced a video as their end product instead of a poster, as per previous runs of the II. We modified the rubrics to reflect the elements we want to see in their videos (sections included: identifying the problem, proposed recommendations and video design).
We were initially unsure of what kinds of videos students would produce, and whether it would be too difficult a task (especially given the tight timeline). We eventually went ahead with it, and the videos we received fell under the following broad categories:
Groups that read off their project log (a scaffolding document they used to plan their video)/ voiceover powerpoint slides
Groups that did skits on the plights of PWDs
Groups that conducted interviews with schoolmates to gather their views on the issue
Student artefacts:
Click the video to watch or access it here. >>>
This group of students from my 3N class used Instagram stories to draw/ animate parts of their video. Specifically, they drew illustrations to introduce their proposed solutions to help people facing mental health challenges.
Click the video to watch or access it here. >>>
This group of student from Cryst's 3E class made use of Clipchamp — a platform with an AI video editor feature — to put their video together.
Some pros and cons:
(+) The end product would be more visually appealing engaging compared to just a voiceover.
(-) The media resources (images/ short videos) available in the AI's bank are often western-centric, so you would see in the above group's end product that the humans featured are Westerners, which is not relevant to the context of our II (on needs of PWDs in Singapore).
How students can leverage on this platform:
For storyboarding (e.g. seeing what kind of shots/ images the AI chooses and replicating them in a local context)
For visualising ideas/ concepts that would be difficult to 'film/reenact' in real life (e.g. the group suggested having LTA partner with companies like Samsung/ Apple/ Xiaomi to offer exclusive discounts on smartphones with enhanced accessibility features to meet the needs of people with physical disabilities)
Moving forward...
One area that we should look into for the next run of the II would be in designing the final task. Consider:
How do we better scaffold the video task, especially for the 3N students?
Ms Tang: by exposing them to the possibilities [e.g. video-making platforms they can try/ video styles (e.g. skit, newscasting, animation)]
Does the end product have to be standardised? Or can students choose how they want to demonstrate their learning?
How can we get students to 'level up' their posters?
Instead of just transplanting the chunks of words they have in their project log onto a blank poster document, how can we help students better understand what goes behind a poster that can be an effective call to action?
Ms Tang: e.g. posters with QR codes that viewers can scan to learn more about a specific issue/ other elements of sophistication (e.g. relevant photographs/ diagrams)
*Maybe can get students to play the MetaRubric game!
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