eJournal Post 5 - Identifying Instructional Strategies

This week, from the desk of Mr. T, is all about how I am going to teach students the instruction that I am designing.  We get to talk about instructional strategies: the delivery vehicle for what I am teaching. 
To recap, what I am teaching are the concepts of population demographics (which are those things that relate to changes in population size) and what we can infer from trends in population data.  The students should be able to draw conclusions from such things as birth rate, death rate, infant mortality rate, population density, and life expectancy and what factors can cause those things to change over time.  The student should also be able to make predictions using current and past data.  Since the perspective I am taking for this project assumes that the students have already been introduced to these concepts, the lesson itself is the final summative assessment of the entire unit.  This is the students’ chance to prove that they have learned what has been taught.  I’ll address the three components mentioned in the prompt for this week, which are:

1) motivation: how will you engage and motivate your learners to learn?

2) prerequisite and subskills: what is that they will learn and in what order?

3) practice and feedback: how will you know that they have learned it? and how will you let learners know whether they’ve learned?

The original iteration of this project was a PBL-style formulation of a plan to address a problem.  The students select a country that has an identified problem (or will if things don’t change) and it is up to the students to determine the best plan to manage that problem.  For example, India has tremendous population growth.  

As a matter of fact, it is poised to become the largest country in the world by population by 2022.  They have a very large population of people under the age of 25, which is significant from a reproductive standpoint because people in that group are entering their prime reproductive years.  Continued population growth, coupled with increased demand for resources can put intense strain on world supply chains.  Finding a way to curb this growth would be a important pursuit and this project gives students the opportunity to do so.  It is a real problem that students have to identify through research.  Selecting familiar countries increases the personal connection to the project, which also increases motivation (#1).  I have tried to maintain the instructional focus within the PBL realm as much as possible. 

As I mentioned before, this project is a chance for students to demonstrate research and analytical skills in finding relevant data and draw conclusions based on that data, the prerequisites and subskills (#2).  One could alter the project slightly to more explicitly incorporate the lessons that teach the underlying concepts and skills required to successfully complete the project, because I looked at this ID Document project as way to develop a lesson within a unit and not to develop a unit in its entirety.  However, the avenue of practice and feedback (#3) is still built in with the formal presentation of the management plan and various grading rubrics.  Integral to the successful completion of this project are the frequent formative assessments built in.  Since this project is utilizing many indirect instructional strategies (inquiry, project based learning, and authentic instruction, to name a few), teacher involvement in the design process throughout every step is crucial.  It is too easy for students to a) slack off because of the long timeline, b) work diligently at drawing the wrong conclusions, or c) develop a well-constructed presentation of a plan that is not practical or morally acceptable.  

Sources: Gladstone, Rick. “India Will Be Most Populous Country Sooner Than Thought, U.N. Says.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 July 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/world/asia/india-will-be-most-populous-country-sooner-than-thought-un-says.html?_r=1. Accessed 16 Feb. 2017.