School description and school culture:

Cap Coast State School is a small school with approximately 200 students. It is
situated on the Capricorn Coast, close to the ocean. There are no shared classes (i.e
year 4/5 class), with approximately 25 students per grade/class. The school has 17
teaching staff including specialised teachers (H.P.E and music teachers) and teacher
aids. Due to the school being relatively small, it has a strong sense of community.
The school is lucky enough to receive a lot of parent assistance in the classroom.
Generally, most students come from a high socio economic background.
Year 4 class profiling information:
The group in question is the 23 students (13 girls, 10 boys) that make up the Year 4
classroom. This class is great at group work and listening to each others ideas. The
students have a fairly good understanding of technology however; there is lots of
room for improvement and more learning. In general, the groups weakness is
English, in particular, spelling and grammar. This class has one gifted and talented
students and two diagnosed ADHD students.
Curriculum requirements:
Year 4 Geography:
The importance of environments to animals and people and different views on how
they can be protected.
The types of natural vegetation and the significance of vegetation to the
environment and to people (ACARA, 2012).

Year 4 Mathematics:
Use scaled instruments to measure and compare lengths, masses, capacities and
temperatures.
Solve problems involving purchases and the calculation of change to the nearest five
cents with and without digital technologies (ACARA, 2012).

Year 4 Science:
Living things, including plants and animals depend on each other and the
environment to survive (ACARA, 2012).

Factors that make the learning journey complicated:
Some possible set backs or complications to our learning journey may be:
1. The timeline in which it has to be completed. Because this is only one
element of the curriculum, a lot of time also needs to be spent on other
subject areas as well. So, time management is crucial for this task to be
completed.
2. Another difficulty will be how I mark or assess each of these students and
what reporting format I will use. I need to ensure that each students
receives the same attention when it comes to handing out grades.
3. Hardware use may be an issue so, I need to ensure I have all of the tools
that I require before setting the task that requires certain tools.
4. I need to consider how much tech support I am going to receive. I will need
to organise my teacher aid time well and plan to do a labour intensive lesson
when I have parent or teacher aid help.
5. I have to consider the pedagogy style that is expected of me from the school.
This school expects its staff to do explicit teaching, so when I am teaching
my lessons, I need to be sure to include wording such as I do, we do, you
do etc.
6. I will need support from my colleagues for this task as I will be using school
areas outside the classroom. If my colleagues arent on side with me, it may
make completing the project difficult if they dont want me in areas near their
classrooms.
Reasons for my choices/decisions about the learning sequences and unit
overview:
When planning for my unit plan/lessons, I have considered the SAMR model and
ensured that I used activities that would include each stage of the model. I have
learnt that the SAMR model enables me to gauge how technology is used by my
students and how I can create new ways to use this technology. I have remembered
that the model is premised on ICT as a tool for learning, not as a substitute for a
teacher (DEWA, 2014).
The substitution phase is when the technology is used as a direct substitute
(DEWA, 2014). In the sixth lesson, I have asked the students to create a table on
Word. This offers no functional change to the activity, however it incorporates the
use of technology.
The augmentation stage involves some functional improvement but is still a direct
tool substitute (DEWA, 2014). An example of this is in the fourth and fifth lesson, I
have asked the students to create a budget in Excel. This would be very time
consuming if they werent to use this tool, therefore creating a slight enhancement.
The modification stage involves giving students a different kind of task that allows
for significant technology redesign (DEWA, 2014). My students will do this when
they are asked to make a movie in the final lesson. They will be using multimedia,
adding sound and video to their movie. Without technology, this task would have
been previously inconceivable.
Finally, the redefinition stage is doing something that was inconceivable without
technology and gives students a stage (DEWA, 2014). For example, in my second
lesson, I have asked students to access a class wiki created by me. Students are
able to communicate with each other, share ideas/photos/links with each other to
help the learning.
In the second lesson, I have incorporated the idea of a flipped classroom.
According to Brame (2014), the flipped classroom is a reversal of traditional teaching
where students gain first exposure to new material outside of class, usually via
reading or internet use, and then class time is used to do the harder work of
assimilating that knowledge through strategies such as problem-solving,
discussion or debates. This allows for more teaching time and more planning time
for the students on their project. The purpose of flipping the classroom is to shift
from passive to active learning to focus on higher order thinking skills such as
analysis, synthesis and evaluation (University of Queensland, 2014). So in terms of
our project, this will allow the students to study up on Emperor Penguins individually
or in small groups prior to class time and when they meet face to face, they can
explore content through active learning and engagement strategies as a whole
group.
In the first lesson, I have included a discussion forum on a wiki page. This will
include key questions about the students growing understanding of their learning
journey so I could demonstrate transformational learning. I have included complex
situations for the students, such as creating a big PowerPoint presentation as a
group. It will require lots of team work, problem solving, higher order thinking and
compromise.
Throughout the seven lessons, I incorporated group work in almost every activity. I
have done this because I know this is how my students best learn as they thrive off
of each other. I have also strategically created the focus of the project around
animals because I know that this is their interest and passion. Finally, I have asked
the students to do homework using the internet because I previously know they all
have access to this technology so nobody will be excluded.