The GAME plan is a guide that can support teachers' and students' self-directed learning. There are two ways that I could use the GAME plan with my high school students. These would be effective in helping students develop their proficiency in both technology standards and content standards.
The first way I could use the GAME plan is to use it to help me plan my lessons. By using the GAME plan process for designing and implementing my lessons, I will have my students’ needs in mind. I will think about what the goals of the lesson should be and the action in the form of what type of instruction would be best. I would need to monitor to make sure my students are learning, and evaluate how the lesson went. I could use the GAME plan lesson template to help me remember to think about the process and to help me organize my lessons into these steps.
The second way I could use the GAME plan with my students is to have them learn how to use it themselves so they could become self-directed lifelong learners. I could teach it to them, model it for them in our daily lessons (as described above) and most importantly I could provide them opportunities to practice it in class. Once I teach the process to my students, they could use it with all of our project/problem based and inquiry based learning activities.
I think that both of these ways of using the GAME plan will help my students in the technology standards and in our math content standards as well. I can use the GAME plan to help me plan authentic learning experiences for my students that will meet both sets of standards simultaneously.
As a high school teacher, where students are very close to moving on to college, I think it is extremely important for me to teach this process to my students so they can use it themselves. If a review the list of NETS-S (http://www.iste.org/ ), I see that most of them align with the GAME plan quite naturally. NETS-S #1 is Creativity and Innovation, this is necessary to plan your action. Once you have a goal, sometimes it takes some creative thinking to come up with ideas on how to reach it. By having students plan out their own actions to meet the goals, they will be exercising creativity and innovation. NETS-S #2 Communication and Collaboration, this will come into play with group activities because when working collaboratively it is extremely important to have a GAME plan. By having students use the GAME plan when they are working with others, they will be learning how to effectively communicate and collaborate. NETS-S #3 Research and Information Fluency, this can occur while working on the action part of the GAME plan since many methods for meeting goals will involve some type of research. Also, you can think of it in the reverse as well. When learning how to research effectively, students need a GAME plan. NETS-S #4 Critical thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making, this one is pretty much the GAME plan in a nut shell. While using the GAME plan students will be doing all three of these things.
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Hi Vicky!
ReplyDeleteFor what exactly will your students use the GAME plan? I think it is important, like everything we teach, to scaffold the process. I have considered starting with the basic question: what is a goal? I don't think my students would value focusing on NETS, or any standards for that matter. SO, I might challenge them to set a goal for my class, then discuss what it means to be able to "measure a goal," and so on. Reflection is very important... something that many students balk at. I may begin asking for a list of answers, then a sentence, then 3 sentences, and so on.
Keep up the good work!
Great post!
-Tara
8th Grade ELA
Vicky. As teachers, we probably already use a type of GAME plan in our regular planning. Many students are not successful in school because they have no organization or planning skills. Providing students with an easy to use method could help them develop a way to stay focused, improving both their performance in that subject and in all areas of life.
ReplyDeleteVicky,
ReplyDeleteI believe strongly that one of the best ways to get our students to understand content and processes is through modeling, so I was happy to see you mentioned it in your blog. I would encourage you to start slowly in a step by step system. Perhaps even showing your students plans you have created through the GAME process. I would encourage you to start with a discussion about how they may have set and gone about achieving goals in the past, thereby activating their schema. Then, maybe have them work together as a class to create a GAME plan for the whole class. After that, encourage them to create individual GAME plans. This could easily be incorporated into research projects, or everyday learning activities. This step by step process will allow students to really grasp the idea. Good luck!
Krystin