INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION

 

Teaching the flight unit in grade 6 science at a Toronto independent girls school, I eliminated textbooks and hand-written notes altogether in a flight unit in favor of a wholly immersive and inquiry-based curriculum. I essentially took a backward design approach to unit planning, beginning with three end learning goals:

 

1) Assess societal and environmental impacts of flying devices that make use of properties of air.

2) Investigate ways in which flying devices make use of properties of air.

3) Explain ways in which properties of air can be applied to the principles of flight and flying devices.

 

Conceptual understanding took center stage as students uncovered through experimentation and observation that flight occurs when characteristics of structures take advantage of certain properties of air. Furthermore, the flight unit was incorporated into the Graphing module in their math class as I provided students with iPads and the ActionShot chronophotography app, which allowed students to infer flight principles from quantitative data and even learn about the concept of error in experimentation.