Co-Design & Co-Construct
Tuning in: in this offering Trevor explores an underpinning of the inquiry model: partnering with students to co-design and co-construct for learning. In this session Trevor shares several ways in which you could co-design and co-construct with your learners including expectations and routines, competencies, demonstrations of learning, and assessment tools. For each of these processes, Trevor identifies specific guiding questions that he uses to engage students in thinking, sharing, and collaboratively planning next steps. The social constructivism that is experienced slowly transforms the culture of learning in the classroom to engage students in agency and collaboration.
Learning objectives include:
to create a deeper understanding of how to co-design and co-construct with students.
to plan for agency over time with clear scaffolding and mindful implementation.
to create classrooms of social constructivism and agency.
Pause and reflect: after viewing, please plan for each of the activities outlined in the video. These included:
Expectations and Routines
Competencies, Dispositions, and Habits of Mind
Demonstrations of Learning
Assessment Tools.
As you plan for these conversations, please consider how you can make the thinking visible. For example, as you co-design the expectations and routines of your classroom, curate your student’s ideas into a Google Doc on your projector or on to an anchor chart on your wall.
If you are co-designing the competencies, provide your students with time to make competency posters and co-construct indicators for each. Add in the bitmoji or student photo to this display as a means to engage in personalized goal setting.
When you co-design the demonstrations of learning, consider having exemplars on display for students to see and examine. These will also help you co-construct the success criteria and assessment tools with your learners.
Share and make meaning together: consider tuning into one particular co-design activity, the competencies conversation and adjoining display of posters, indicators, and personalized goal setting. If you have a copy of Inquiry Mindset Assessment Edition, please read chapter 12. If you do not have a copy, download the chapter below.
Use the process outlined in the video as well as the guidance throughout chapter 12 to take this social constructivism to conferring and reporting with your students. This process occurs over time and requires all of the scaffolding and coaching that is outlined in the chapter. Consider making this an ongoing focus for a term, semester, or reporting period within your school year.
Extend your learning: when co-designing and co-constructing becomes a routine in class, agency, ownership, and autonomy become a cultural experience for students. They become more competent, more comfortable, and more confident in taking on some of the heavy lifting of learning. If this is our goal then it important to bring these experiences to our scholars often. Each week, each day, and each moment (I know that sounds overwhelming) should be grounded in reflecting on how we can share designing and constructing with learners more often, more clearly, and more authentically.
Please take stock of your last week of teaching. Where did you co-design and co-construct? Be specific. Make a list of these experiences.
Now, have a glance at your next week of teaching. Where do you plan to co-design and co-construct? Where could you add more opportunities to empower your learners into your planning? Be specific. Make a list of these expectations.
Bonus offering:
Watch this short reflection as Trevor shares thoughts with Press Play on What is Play? Why Play?