Creating Engaging Lessons using Design Activities, Stepien, Spring 2021

Note: Please register online. Purchase order or payment of $975, payable to CASTLETON UNIVERSITY, is due at the time of registration. Please mail the check to: Financial & Registration Services, Castleton University, 62 Alumni Drive, Castleton, VT 05735. To help us ensure that your payment is applied to the correct course, PLEASE WRITE “CFS” IN THE CHECK MEMO LINE. Thank you.

Course Description

This course teaches teachers to use techniques of design to apply Common Core concepts to solve lesson-specific requirements. After practicing five grades K–8-appropriate design activities that teach Common Core Frameworks, participants will identify two lessons they usually teach, and they will develop and present these two lessons, using design activities, for the grade level they teach. Participants will perform two of their peers’ activities, to test and evaluate them. After feedback from fellow participants and instructor, participants will teach the two lessons, giving the respective activities to their students to perform. Through this process, participants will increase and share their knowledge of experiential lesson design as they observe firsthand the benefits of hands-on/experiential activities to increase students’ content knowledge. Class readings, discussions, and their own research will strengthen participants’ understanding of the pedagogical benefits of using design activities in their standards-based classroom.

Creating Engaging Lessons Using Design Activities provides instruction to classroom teachers in three synchronous Zoom! hands-on lesson-sessions, twenty-four hours of documented independent activity consisting of research and development of two design activities that teach two specific Common Core lessons they usually teach, and three follow-up sessions.

Design activities apply broad principles of ‘visual communication design’ to specific lesson plans. Using them, teachers strengthen their awareness of, and their ability to apply, these principles as they arise in the classroom throughout the school year, rather than applying specific strategies to isolated lessons. 

Classroom examples, online synchronous instruction, hands-on activities, peer presentations and critiques, research and lesson design, and in-depth instructor feedback to participant-designed activities, along with review of assessment methods and Common Core Frameworks will prepare teachers for implementation. Successful completion of this course includes three three-hour synchronous lessons and three four-hour synchronous follow-up sessions: 1) each participant presents two personalized classroom design activity lessons; 2) peer participants perform and critique them; 3) participants present their experiences after presenting these lessons and doing these activities with their students.

Audience: Teachers Grades K–8

Course Goals

Short-term: to provide teachers with innovative and immediate ways to teach content knowledge in the classroom.

Long-term: to give teachers confidence to teach any Common Core Frameworks to students by having them perform design activities in a hands-on, real-time way; to reinforce teachers’ understanding of the positive impact that hands-on activity has upon learning any content; and to help teachers to be better equipped to use design activities to teach content, regardless of curricular changes or requirements.

Course Objectives: Participants will…

1. Identify grade-level Frameworks that are within Common Core Standards;
2. Through discussions of course readings and doing course activities, demonstrate understanding of    
         content knowledge gained in their class sessions and through discussions and critiques with
         instructor and peers;
3. Identify two specific Common Core Frameworks to be addressed, and develop and implement two     
         respective lessons that show understanding of how to use design activities to teach these lessons
         in course units in the classroom;
4. Specify student assessment/s associated with each learning standard by designing, making, and using a rubric for each of the two activities;

5. Clearly and articulately interpret the results of using the two design activities to teach the two lessons, and—based on these interpretations and supported by research and classroom observations and observations of student success—explain in a class presentation, and in writing, how these activities enhance student learning.

Required Texts

There are no required texts for this course.

Specific readings will be completed prior to each of the three lesson-sessions and the first two discussion sessions. Readings include hands-on, activity/design-based pedagogies of Reggio Emilia, Friedrich Froebel, Rudolf Steiner, Maria Montessori; readings from communication design and other sources that address design-across-the-curriculum; and readings on visual-tactile learning (including sources that discuss teaching to students with learning challenges—including some of my academic research—in the general classroom as distinguished from special education classes).

Required Materials

Students are asked to have the following items for this course:

• Notebook or sketchbook
  * Bone folder with one pointed end (Talas 6" 7" or 8", NOT plastic)
•  X-Acto knife with #11 blades OR Olfa SVR2 cutter and extra blades
• 18" stainless steel ruler, cork backed (NOT aluminum; Talas TTB036002 is good and inexpensive)
• 50–60 sheets copier paper, 8 ½ x 11" (white is fine, or you may want to use different colors)
• 10 or so sheets construction paper or cover-weight paper, 9" x 12"
• one pack colored pencils (basic pack, eight–12 colors)
• one large glue stick (permanent is best; you may want repositionable, working with children)
• one pack #1 Bookbinders 2-3/8" blunt tip needles (Talas TTS039012 are best)
  • one sharp-pointed needle or awl
• one self-healing cutting board, 12" x 18" (art and craft stores sell these)
• 20-25 rubber bands
• one large sheet mat board or foam board (art and craft stores sell these)
  • one large sheet lightweight paper, such as from a presentation pad
• access to a printer to print worksheets that will be uploaded to Canvas

For additional course information

Donna Stepien
(781) 710.6512

For additional registration information

Bethany Sprague
(802) 468-1325

Register online now!