- 6/18/2025
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00:00Okay, so for today's final presentation share, I'm going to be walking you through the final project unit design of the Amazon Rainforest for the EDT 6010 for Professor Samuel Kwan, and my name is Seth Deutsch.
00:16I'm going to be walking you through how I went about this unit. So the overall unit design and the unit focus was really to start with the ownership of the Amazon Rainforest, the geography of Latin America, and economics and culture kind of embedded between those two.
00:33The key issues, students will study the Amazon Rainforest groups to decipher who will be the rightful owner of this coveted land. This is a land that is currently an issue, and there are people still arguing over this, so it's not only a topical project that they're doing, but it's also something that has to do with geography and all the elements of that region.
00:54The students will be going through some activities. The first will be understanding the geography of the region through maps. They will then compare and contrast the various groups that are involved, and then they'll be assigned one of those groups, and they'll have to create a series of debate arguments that coexist with a visual aid created by someone in the group, and then finally, on the final day, there will be a debate in which all the groups will have kind of a town hall meeting, and they'll be able to discuss their ideas, arguments, etc., and there will be a final vote.
01:24The groups that are being studied are the loggers, who are involved in the wood and logging industry, the rubber tappers, who provide rubber for global use, and they take it from the sap of the trees, the environmentalists, who their true purpose is to just protect the ecosystem and the people and the native Amazonians and the many animals, plants, and species there.
01:45The cow ranchers are there to represent the beef industry, which is about the largest majority of beef distribution around the world is from the Amazon, and the native Amazonians, who are the indigenous people who have inhabited these lands for thousands of years.
02:00Moving forward, some background learners, as you can see in the upper left here, it is in Chicago.
02:08It's about 16 students who age from 12 to 13 from an affluent suburb.
02:13It is predominantly white, with one Indian American and one South Korean student, both fluent in English, though.
02:19Socio-academic status ranges from middle to upper class, which kind of gives you a background of resources and books and availability of technologies and overall, like where the students lie in terms of their resources and where they're from and who they are.
02:35Their prior knowledge on this specific unit is geography of South America.
02:42They have an idea based off some of the geography stuff we've done earlier in the year.
02:46They should be familiar with the climate discussions that we have from their science course, and they should have some background when we talk about native Amazonians with ancient civilizations from their sixth grade course, and economics from earlier this year when we talked about GDP, supply and demand, etc.
03:02Some of the needs that the students have in this classroom, there are two students with IEPs that are executive functioning and focus based, and two students with 504 plans that are based on the idea of needing check-ins and advance notice, particularly for students who struggle with anxiety.
03:21And the rest are at or above national average in terms of where they are and their math testing, etc.
03:25The overall strength in this classroom, as you can see down here, is they enjoy a deadline.
03:30They enjoy things that are going to be self-motivated, things that they can push towards, things that they can do to try to get to their desired goal based off their own roles and their own responsibilities, as opposed to me just directing, instructing, directing, instructing.
03:45Moving forward, the standards, standards and objectives.
03:51So, the three that I have listed here on the left are evaluating how cultural and economic decisions influence environments and the daily lives of people both nearby and in distant places.
04:01They have construct different representations to explain the spatial patterns of cultural and environmental characteristics.
04:10And finally, they want to evaluate, or I need them to evaluate, alternative approaches or solutions to current economic issues in terms of benefits and costs for different groups and society as a whole.
04:21Now, my objectives for them, students will be able to analyze the economic and environmental impact of the Amazon.
04:27That's very important for me to be able to kind of decipher.
04:31Students will be able to compare and contrast the varying groups that demand ownership of the rainforest.
04:36So, not only their own group that they're assigned, but all the other groups that are assigned as well.
04:40Students will be able to create arguments for and against specific groups claiming ownership of the rainforest.
04:45So, being able to create sustaining arguments with background and evidence.
04:49And students will be able to connect content to human lives and societal factors.
04:54What's really going on with the people of the Amazon, the people outside of the Amazon, the people in the overarching global society.
05:03The learning strategies.
05:05I wanted to go with two here.
05:06So, project-based learning.
05:07As you can see from this image here, I want people to work together, sitting at the same table, doing things with a desired goal.
05:13Students will be creating a project based around a debate argument.
05:17Be scaffolded with a visual aid.
05:19There will be research components.
05:21And working with a group in a multifaceted presentation creation that will be shown to the class.
05:27Now, discovery learning will also be used through self-directed work, self-created work, visually creative work.
05:34Creating roles and responsibilities among group members.
05:36So, kind of deciphering who does what, when do I do this, because I will not be giving that to them.
05:41And benefits the ability to learn in a unique way for each individual.
05:46Value of technology.
05:48So, tech being used everywhere.
05:49Google Slides, Canvas Slides, ClipGrid, and Poll everywhere.
05:53With tech, interactive maps, visual aids for debate, higher level research, and online discussion boards.
06:00These will all be used to really show and improve their work.
06:05It will not only give them more boundless things to be able to research and find information on, but it will also help them kind of understand the content better as well.
06:17Now, if you did not have tech, it would still work, mind you.
06:20But students would need to use physical, non-interactive maps, which I don't think they'd be able to pull as much information from or click on the links.
06:26Research relies on books and printed resources, which I actually personally think would not be the worst, although it might not give them as much information and they wouldn't be able to kind of tailor where they're going with their information.
06:39It would be harder to find.
06:40The debate would still occur, but it would lack the visual aid, which personally, over the years that I've done this, has been one of the most important parts.
06:47The visual aid kind of helps the students in the audience understand what they're looking at.
06:52And the voting would shift to a manual method, which could be hands in the air, names in a hat, etc.
06:57So, looking at my day-to-day, day one, the geography of South America, research basics of Amazon.
07:07So, basically, it's just the geography, the basics of what the Amazon does and the industries that exist within it, a little bit about just like what is the Amazon, and then introducing the groups.
07:20So, loggers, cattle ranchers, etc.
07:23The second day, there will be a station's activity.
07:25So, research each group of the debate in depth.
07:28So, going from station to station, stopping at the loggers, native Amazonians, cattle ranchers, and they'll be taking notes and filling out a worksheet with that.
07:37They will also be covering geography, economics, and culture on this day to kind of get an overarching background.
07:42Day three is where they're going to be assigned one of those groups, and they're going to have to pick roles amongst each other to decide who's doing what, who's creating the arguments, who's creating the visual tool,
07:51who's going to be doing kind of our research, who's our speaker, etc.
07:56And day four will be the debate day.
07:58The whole day is debated to a town hall debate in which one group will come up at a time.
08:02They'll give their opening arguments.
08:04Next group will give their opening arguments, so on.
08:06And then the groups will come up again and give their rebuttal to the previous arguments, choosing one group that they want to rebuttal against.
08:13And then finally, they'll be closing arguments, and there'll be a recap, and there'll be a vote.
08:19And we'll make sure that we hit our standards and objectives as well.
08:22Differentiation.
08:24So my approach is universal design for learning.
08:28This is something that my school is very passionate about.
08:31Essentially, as you can see, this imagery over here, it's for engagement.
08:35It's for action.
08:36It's for expression and representation.
08:38The idea is not everyone learns in the same way, so giving people multiple options for things where they can learn and what works best for them.
08:47So I'm going to give them student choice for the visual aid, as you can see here.
08:50So they can do a poster, a slideshow, or a video for their visual aid.
08:54Now, this supports diverse learners and boosts their engagement.
08:57The tools.
08:58I have audio and video lessons via Screencastify for guided supports.
09:02I have text-to-speech software for the lengthy readings they may do.
09:05And I have translated materials for if anyone needs English language learning materials.
09:10The goal is to provide multiple access points to help students succeed.
09:14So what are different ways that we can find these desired standards and objectives and not only create one avenue for my students?
09:24I will have some handouts.
09:27On the left here, you can see that this is the debate itself.
09:30This is how the debate is set up, showing the opening, the rebuttal, and the conclusion.
09:33And it's going into what some of those roles are.
09:36Speakers, writers, note-takers.
09:38And on the right, there's this kind of more of just a visual version of that.
09:41But it does include a reason, one, and evidence to kind of show them what it could look like.
09:47So if one of their reasons was cattle ranching brings in money for the economy, according to the cattle ranch packet to show that they need to cite their sources,
09:54here's a statistic to show that they need actual evidence, and it kind of allows your reasoning behind it.
10:01And those are some of the handouts that they might be able to see as they're working through this.
10:07So I have some student examples here.
10:09I have a digital and non-digital version of the pros and cons.
10:12I do give them the option.
10:14Most people end up choosing the digital pros and cons.
10:16But as you can see here, they go, this is during the station activity day.
10:20So on day two, they go from station to station, and they fill out a pros and cons sheet.
10:25That kind of allows them to see what's good about this group, what's not as great about this group.
10:31And on the right, you can start to see some visual aid examples as well.
10:34From rubber tappers to the loggers, we see that there's imagery involved.
10:40Their main reason is involved.
10:42And they also have their title in there as well.
10:45Okay, so this will kind of jump into a different thing here, but my digital link.
10:52Okay, as you can see, I have, I'll scroll back up to the top.
10:57I have my glossary here.
10:58So this is kind of my library of content.
11:01So I have my list of objectives that I can go to, which are right here, which I've gone over with you.
11:05I have the student handout, the debate packet, which I've gone over with you.
11:10I have the example of the visuals, which I've now gone over with you,
11:14and a couple more that I did not include in the presentation.
11:18I have student examples for the debate, which could be very helpful for students to see what the debate looks like.
11:25And finally, I have a link to another slideshow,
11:28which just has a lot of information for the students to kind of go through with, including the videos as well.
11:36All right, moving forward, my conceptual characterization through the SAMR model.
11:43Substitution is, you know, replacing paper maps and documents with interactive and digital maps and readings.
11:48So just taking one thing and making it a little bit more advanced,
11:51as well as digital tools replacing traditional debate elements for visual aid.
11:55And then augmentation, students create multimedia presentations for the debates,
11:59and the digital voting tools enhance the unit's voting process as well.
12:03So using those two things according to the models.
12:07My evaluation.
12:09So assessing the student learning will be in a formative matter.
12:12So geography notes, station documents, day two, prep, debate, and argument worksheets,
12:18as well as the summative.
12:20The students will be summatively assessed through the debate itself and how they speak and how their arguments go,
12:25the visual aid, whether it's completed, how well it's completed, what's included in its effectiveness,
12:30and overall participation.
12:32Are students raising their hands?
12:33Are certain students not participating at all?
12:36And that's going to be how I kind of grade them that day.
12:38Now assessing the effectiveness of the unit design, so essentially grading myself.
12:44There'll be a student survey where they can fill out to show the effectiveness.
12:46Did they feel like they learned a lot?
12:48Did they feel like they met the standards, et cetera?
12:50And then social studies curriculum head observation.
12:55I will actually, and I usually do have the social studies curriculum head in my classroom during the debate
13:00in certain days beforehand to see how I'm doing and if the unit seems effective.
13:06And then aligning student work with pre-created objectives.
13:08So their final product, I'll look at the standards and objectives and see if they align.
13:12Okay, and this is where I'll keep my links to the YouTube link that will be updated soon after.
13:20So let me jump back over here.
13:23And I'm going to...
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