Planning a new mural has been a very good experience, in great part due to the OLTD program I am currently attending. Reviewing educational theories and processes has helped me plan this activity thoroughly, in a way that makes it easier for me to defend its value. The proposal I originally wrote was very long, and so I have attached here a summary for the proposed mural which will be built at York House. This shorter version has been submitted and I am waiting for approval. However, thanks to the work I did writing the longer proposal under the UbD framework, I am able to talk about the benefits and process of building the mural much easier.

I noticed something that is a little unrelated, but which is a reflection regarding my teaching, and I thought it would be good to mention. Seems like I can read something complicated and simplify it really well, which is the good news. Students have told me that my tutorials are easy to follow, despite being long. This brings me to the bad news: when I am left alone writing a paper, I can write a lot. A lot, a lot! Mostly, it is easy to read, if you don't fall asleep midway. That is a little bit of a bummer. I am planning on writing a book for teens, and I am wondering how that will turn out. Will the writer win, or the summarizer? I have a story that I would love to tell, but unfortunately I don't have an ending for it yet, and knowing me, that is a big problem. Maybe I should wait until the end appears before I start writing, otherwise it could just go on forever.

Since I started learning about pedagogy and methods of teaching, I found the premise of Understanding by Design very attractive and natural to me. The process of defining what I want students to learn, then thinking about methods of assessing those blocks of learning, and finally filling in activities to bring that understanding forward, made a lot of sense. However, I have to admit that after thinking of my goals, I usually went straight to the activities, and never really did track down to see what activities were contributing to which goal.

That's one of the reasons I am happy we revisited Understanding by Design on my 502 class. This gave me a chance to look back at activities I had done before, and focus on one that I would have done differently, or planned better. I decided to pick mural planning because I am about to work on two new murals -- one with grade 9s, and one with grade 11s and 12s. Besides using the three step process to design the lesson, I also kept in focus another important detail of Understanding by Design, which is ensuring the student learns transferable skills, that can become a part of the student knowledge and can be used in the future.

Forcing myself to write the goals down also made them sound much more concrete than before. In retrospect, my goals were basic: "students finish mural" and "students depict their favourite things" and "students reflect on their work". That's what happens when you don't write things down, I suppose! That was a problem, specially because this mural (and other activities that incorporate inquiry and Sparks) are supposed to be easily followed online by other teachers, should they choose to do so. Without clear goals and a good reason why, how could I expect others to take on such daunting projects?

My five new goals are much more true to what I am actually trying to coach students towards. One of the most important portions of their learning, the ability to communicate and come to an agreement, to collaborate and work on something big together, was nowhere to be found. Under my replanned activity, communication is everywhere! 

On my final graphic, I used a colour coordinated system in order to track down which activities addressed which goals. This is also a huge improvement from my previous tracking system, which was... well, none. I knew the activity was helping achieve a goal, but since nothing was tracked, nothing was clear. I found out through the graph, the activities usually touch upon at least two goals.

Also, I noticed that by defining the assessment piece before jotting down my activities, I was able to add activities that allowed for more demonstrations of learning. Encouraging students to continue to collaborate to make sure the pieces fit, for instance, is not something I had done previously; I did notice a few students were doing this on their own, and those pieces looked better together than the rest. So, this activity is good towards the goal of collaborating, it is natural for students, and it makes the final result a stronger piece, besides matching the assessment piece "Students are able to collaborate and express viewpoints".

I probably won't do a graph such as this for every activity I do, but I am trying to design an excel spreadsheet that serves a similar function. I think the cross-referencing and colour coding is particularly helpful to track which activities help which goals. This graph is, however, an excellent thing to make available online, as a way for teachers who want to undertake these large inquiry projects to validate their efforts. It is also valuable when showing the administration of the school, as it explains the why and how of mural creation, and the value in this activity.

Guiding students through an inquiry project on an online setting is one of my dreams. To do something like this, however, it is important to define my goals and the steps to be taken in a simple and straightforward manner.

My next step in this process will be to create a student-centered guide to this creative inquiry process. So far, I have a lot for teachers, but not a whole lot for students. But there is time!