Developing a sustainable, useful and practical ICT Scope & Sequence for my school has required a lot of thinking & development. The direction of the school' s ICT Scope & Sequence has come from its eLearning plan 2008-2011. [See http://www.ictedservices.com/eLearning_Planning.html and my blogpost of 18.02.2009 for what has happened before in this process.]
To make a plan that will be used by all teachers, enhance current curriculum planning, reflect the Victorian Essential Learning Standards for ICT, lead to useful assessment tools and be manageable has been a challenge.
However, I think we have now developed a useful model. This has used the planning documents of the Grade 3/4 Professional Learning Team [PLT] as a starting point. I have used their current documentation for term 2, 2009 [which finishes in three weeks]. After meetings in the last week with both the Grade 3/4 and Grade 5/6 PLTs, they have both agreed to try the model next term.
So this is the model [no rocket science here], but I think an improvement on many of the ICT Scope & Sequence documents I have read, which imply that:
1. The teacher, teaches only ICT and is obsessed by checklists and spreadsheets [and is armed with a clipboard 24/7, monitoring and recording every time a student right clicks to get a contextual menu etc.]
2. The teacher has the post doctoral qualification necessary to understand the terminology of the Scope & Sequence document.
3. In reality, the teacher will be overwhelmed and will use every excuse possible to ignore the document.
So what is our school's ICT Scope & Sequence process [ based on the 3/4 & 5/6 PLT planning documents]
1. We get each PLTs Annual Planner [an A3 sheet and highlight any references to ICT in any subject/ domain]
2. We then get each PLTs Term Planners [A number of A4 pages of the activities to teach each VELS domain & dimension made at the end of the previous term]. Here is a Download Term 2 34 2009 of the ICT related parts on the Term 2/2009 3/4 PLT Planner. Highlighted parts relate to the explicit teaching of ICT.
3. I've created an ICT Scope & Sequence proforma / document for the 3/4 PLT with the following features:
• The extent of the school's ICT program P-6
• The applications / Web 2.0 Tools that need to be taught in the 3/4 Scope & Sequence for this term, related to the activities that have been highlighted.
• A matrix placing the activities to be taught [from the PLT planning documents] under the 3 dimensions for ICT for the 3/4 PLT [ICT for Visualising Thinking, ICT for Creating & ICT for Communicating]
• The one ICT activity is highlighted in each ICT dimension
• A three stage assessment rubric has been made for each highlighted activity
• A list of ICT skills that require specific teaching is extracted from this matrix
• These ICT skills are listed on another matrix, as to who will teach them, [ The ICT teacher, the Librarian or the classroom teachers]
• A list of the Professional Learning requirements on those staff who will teach those explicit ICT skills are then listed. There are a number of modes of delivery for this, i.e. external provider, demonstration lesson, mentoring, peer teaching, or professional learning session in a PLT meeting.
Documents:
Download ICT Scope & Sequence 3_4 T2_2009 Scope & Sequence model
PowerPoint Activity about Australia Planner #1 #2
As usual for my blogposts, I will report back later........
