A Model Plan by Bernice McCarthy

TITLE: A Model Plan

GRADE: K-Adult

AUTHOR: Bernice McCarthy

SUBJECT: Education

DATE: 1/18/2006

OVERVIEW: To provide a detailed explanation of each of the eight steps of the 4MAT System.

HOMEWORK: 

CONCEPT: The Concept(19)

BRIDGE: The Bridge

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: Essential Question

OUTCOMES: What learners will know, be able to do, become

Standards Alignments: 

MA.4-5.6.B - > Solve one- and two-step problems involving whole numbers, fractions and decimals using addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. (Mastered)

CONNECT: Connect students directly to the concept in a personal way.

1. Connect: co (with) + nectere (to bind)

Establish a relationship between your learners and the content connecting it to their lives, not telling them how it CONNECTS, but having something actually happen in the classroom that will bring them to make the connection themselves. The experience must encompass the heart of the content.

Objective: To Create an Experience. To enter into the experience, to engage the Self, and to connect personal meaning with experience.  

Activity:  Connect students directly to the concept in a personal way. Capture students' attention by initiating a group problem-solving activity before delivery of instruction. Begin with a situation that is familiar to students and builds on what they already know. Construct a learning experience that allows diverse and personal student responses. Facilitate the work of cooperative teams of students.

Assessment: Engagement, imagination and idea generation of students.

ATTEND: Guide students to reflection and analysis of the experience.

2. Attend: ad (to, towards) + tend (to stretch)

Have your students analyze what just happened, have them ATTEND to their own experience and to the perceptions of their fellow students; how it went, what really happened. Note another form of the word, "attention".

Objective: Examine the Experience

Activity: Guide students to reflection and analysis of the experience. Encourage students to share their perceptions and beliefs. Summarize and review similarities and differences. Establish a positive attitude toward the diversity of different people's experience. Clarify the reason for the learning

Assessment: The quality of students' analysis of their collective subjective world of experience. Students ability to explore stated feelings by listening, listing, patterning, prioritizing, stating their own reflections.

IMAGE: Use another medium (not language) to connect students to the concept

3. Image: (to form a mental picture). You need your students to IMAGINE, to picture the concept as they understand it, (Einstein seeing light curving) have experienced it, before you take them to the experts.

Objective: Integrating personal experiences into conceptual understanding. 

Activity: Provide a metaview, lifting students into a wider view of the concept. Use another medium (not reading or writing) to connect students' personal knowing to the concept (i.e. visual arts, music, movement, etc.). Involve learners in reflective production that blends the emotional and the cognitive. Transforms the concept yet to be taught into an image or experience, a "sneak preview" for the students. Deepen the connection between the concept and its relationship to the students' lives. Relate what the students already know to what the experts have found

Assessment: Quality of student production and reflection.

INFORM: Provide "expert knowledge" related to the concept.

2. Inform: in (into) + form (to shape)

Provide "acknowledged body of knowledge" related to the concept. Emphasize the most significant aspects of the concept in an organized, organic manner. Present information sequentially so students see continuity. Draw attention to important, discrete details; don't swamp students with myriad facts. 

Use a variety of delivery systems: interactive lecture, text, guest speakers, films, visuals, CAI, demonstrations, etc. when available.

PRACTICE: Provide hands-on activities for practice and mastery.

5. Practice: praktikos (capable of being used)

Stay first with the left mode. Your students must PRACTICE the learning as the experts have found it. It is not yet time for innovation, or adaptation. They need to learn by practicing, they need to become sufficiently skilled before they can innovate. Create work practice that is fun, yet demanding. Facilitate the moving through the activities, the centers you create to help them achieve mastery.

Objective: Working on Defined Concepts (Reinforcement and Manipulation)

Activity: Provide hands-on activities for practice and mastery. Check for understanding of concepts and skills by using relevant standard materials, i.e. worksheets, text problems, workbooks, teacher prepared exercises, etc.. Provide opportunities for students to practice new learning, perhaps in multi-modal ways (learning centers, games fostering skills development, etc.). Set high expectations for skills mastery. Use concept of mastery learning to determine if re-teaching is necessary and how it will be carried out. Students may create additional multi-modal practice for each other

Assessment: Quality of student work, perhaps an objective quiz.

EXTEND: Provide opportunity for students to design explorations of concept.

6. Extend: ex (out of) + tend (to stretch)

This is where innovation begins. Students know enough, have enough skills to begin the tinkering, playing with the content, the skills, the materials, the ideas, the wholes and the parts, the details, the data and the big picture, to make something of this learning for themselves, to be interpretive.

Objective: "Messing Around" (Adding Something of Themselves)

Activity: Encourage tinkering with ideas/relationships/connections. Set up situations where students have to find information not readily available in school texts. Provide opportunity for students to design their own open-ended explorations of the concept. Provide multiple options so students can plan a unique "proof" of learning. Require students to organize and synthesize their learning in some personal, meaningful way. Require students to begin the process of planning how their project will be evaluated, identifying their own criteria for excellence

Assessment:  Students on-task behavior and engagement in their chosen options.

REFINE (Quadrant Four, Left Mode:Give guidance and feedback to student adaptations.

7. Refine: re (again) + fin (the end, limit, boundary). Stay first with the left mode again. The students have proposed an extension of the leaarning into their lives. They need to evaluate that extension.

Objective: Evaluating for Usefulness and Application

Activity: Give guidance and feedback to students' plans, encouraging, refining, and helping them to be responsible for their own learning. Help students analyze their use of the learning for meaning, relevance, and originality. Maintain high expectations for completion of chosen options. Help mistakes to become learning opportunities. Summarize by reviewing the whole, bringing students "full circle" to the experience with which the learning began

Assessment: Students' willingness and ability to edit, refine, rework, analyze, and complete their own work.

PERFORM: Establish atmosphere that celebrates  sharing learning.

8. Perform: per (through) + form (form, shape. mold). Lastly, have your students perform: Here the content takes a new shape, as it is formed through the learners. Look for originality, relevance, new questions, connections to larger ideas, skills that are immediately useful, values confirmed or questioned anew.

Objective: Doing it Themselves and Sharing what they Do with Others.

Activity: Support students in learning, teaching, and sharing with others. Establish a classroom atmosphere that celebrates the sharing of learning. Have opportunity for students to practice new learnings . Make student learning available to the larger community, i.e. books students write are shared with other classes; students report in school paper; student work is displayed throughout the school; etc.. Leave students wondering (creatively) about further possible applications of the concept, extending the "what ifs" into the future.

Assessment: Students ability to report and demonstrate what they have learned.  Expressions of student enjoyment in the sharing of their learning.  Quality of student final products.