Group B – Kylie Ogilvie, Marco Tancon, Sophie Taylor, and Emma Morgan
Overview:
Description
Poverty is a global, multifaceted issue that is affected by a wide range of systemic, social, economic, political, and environmental factors. We are going to focus on two of the main areas that affect poverty: health and cost of living. Health is a complex state that defines physical, mental, and social well-being so it is important to discuss healthcare, addiction, and disability. The cost of living is the amount of money that is required to cover basic expenses in a certain geographical area. Two areas that heavily define the cost of living are employment and housing.
Misconceptions
Poverty is widely viewed as a developing country issue. Whether it is a UNICEF ad in between a sports game or a Red Cross campaign to help a population, poverty is often portrayed where it is most visible and acute. While poverty is often seen at its most extreme in developing countries, varying degrees of it can be seen in developed ones including Canada.
Another misconception about poverty is that it is a choice to be impoverished. Laziness, lack of education, and unintelligence define some of the common arguments around this issue. These arguments fail to acknowledge the multitude of systemic issues that enable poverty, two of which we will be exploring: health and cost of living.
Learning Context and Learners
The audience of our lesson will be high school aged students (ages 14-18). Most high school aged students will have already been exposed to a basic version of this content. If these students are Canadian, they will have prior knowledge on poverty from their Social Studies classes. Some students may have a deeper understanding than others of poverty and factors that affect it by either being impoverished themselves or witnessing others be affected by it. All students will have some prior experience of learning online, and they will all have access to the internet and technology needed to complete the lesson. We want to make the lesson accessible and inclusive to all students by embedding UDL principles and the learners have access to assistive technologies and tools.
Rationale (Theory/Design/Technology)
Our learning design heavily incorporates the feedback of behaviorism and the individual-guided experience of constructivism. Throughout our lesson, the learner will complete a series of quizzes to assess their knowledge on the content. They will receive a percentage or grade on how well they answered the multiple-choice quizzes. These quizzes heavily incorporate the feedback and reinforcement of behaviorism theory. At the end of the lesson, students will complete discussion posts to come up with solutions to either an individual factor of poverty or a specific scenario. A self-assessment will be given to determine how well the student felt they understood and satisfied the learning outcomes. These two activities will allow the student to not only use their new knowledge in a real-world context, but also assess how well their interpretations of the content satisfied the outcomes. These two theories were a good fit for our topic as the topic is so content-heavy. The feedback provided from the quizzes allows for students to be reminded of important concepts and the discussion post allows students to move away from passive learning from reading into active learning.
The lesson plan is heavily designed around inquiry-based learning. Due to the content-heavy nature of the topic, the inquiry-based design allows students to be engaged during the entire lesson and participate in a multitude of active learning. With heavy content, it can be easy for students to fall behind, zone out, or miss key concepts. As our lesson plan has many areas for students to participate in, students will be able to satisfy learning outcomes without the issue of large blocks of text inhibiting their attention. To avoid large blocks of mundane text, we plan on highlighting important concepts and vocab while including visual media as an alternative to reading.
The technology chosen for our lesson is provided by the H5P plugin on WordPress. This allows the quizzes to be easily embedded into the WordPress site and gets rid of the issues of other sites being down, difficulty understanding other platforms, or the need to download programs/content. Keeping it all on one site allows the content to be easily accessed by school-aged youth. Along with the H5P content, our lesson will include visual media in the form of graphs and videos to assist learning. This media will break up text to give students a break from reading and give students an alternative form of learning to reach a larger audience.
Inclusion and UDL Principles
We plan to embed UDL principles in our lesson to create an inclusive, accessible, and supportive learning environment. Firstly, we plan to “provide multiple means of engagement” (CAST, 2018). Therefore, we want to make the learning objectives and goals very clear at the beginning of the lesson and remind the students of these objectives throughout the whole lesson in different ways. To help increase motivation, we will also provide multiple forms of self-assessment and reflection to help learners identify their progress. Secondly, we want to “provide multiple means of representation” (CAST, 2018). Thus, we plan to provide alternative forms of both auditory information (closed captions, transcripts, descriptions, visuals) and visual information (descriptions, text to speech). We will also provide clear definitions for unfamiliar vocabulary, and carefully consider the design, layout, and readability of our lesson. Lastly, we want to “provide multiple means of action and expression” (CAST, 2018). Therefore, students will be able to show and communicate their learning in multiple ways (discussion post, multiple choice quiz, peer assessment). Maybe for the summative assessment (discussion post), they could have the opportunity to show their solution in a way that suits them best (video, infographic, poem, drawing, audio recording, etc.)? Throughout the process of completing our Interactive Learning Resource, we want to make our lesson inclusive and accessible by implementing more UDL principles.
Learning Design Plan:
| Big Idea What is the big idea that the learner will walk away with at the end of the lesson that is critical for learners at this stage of their learning path? | Learning Outcome(s) What specific things will the learner know or be able to do by the end of the lesson? | Evidence of Learning What does learning look like for this objective? (e.g., accurate performance of a task, correct use of terminology) | Assessments What will learners do to provide evidence of their learning? (e.g., a presentation, a test, a project) | Learning Activities What learning activities will allow learners to acquire and practice the skills necessary to demonstrate their learning and complete the assessment successfully? |
| Develop a greater understanding of factors driving poverty in Canada. | 1. How does one’s health affect poverty in Canada?- Health is a complex state that defines physical, mental, and social well-being so it is important to discuss healthcare, addiction, and disability. 2. How does the cost of living influence poverty in Canada? The cost of living is the amount of money that is required to cover basic expenses in a certain geographical area. Two areas that heavily define the cost of living are employment and housing. | 1. Correct use of terms related to poverty. 2. Ability to identify various factors relating to poverty in Canada. | 1. Discussion Post (rubric) 2. Multiple Choice quiz 3. Peer assessment 4. Self Assessment | Students will be engaging in: – Guided-inquiry – Educational videos with guiding questions to deepen understanding – Articles with guiding questions to deepen understanding – Formative quizzes – Case study/blog post – Commenting on someone else’s post – Self-assessment |
Resources:
CAST. (2018). The UDL Guidelines. https://udlguidelines.cast.org
Clark, B. K., & Wallace, J. K. (2021). Global Connections: Investigating World Issues (3rd ed.). Pearson Canada.
Cost of living calculator. WorkBC Official Website – Cost of Living Calculator. https://www.costofliving.workbc.ca/
Government of Canada, S. C. (2024, January 16). Consumer price index: Annual Review, 2023. The Daily. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/240116/dq240116b-eng.htm
Home. Campaign 2000. (2021, November 24). https://campaign2000.ca/
Home. Canada Without Poverty. (2023, May 30). https://cwp-csp.ca /
Make the month. Make the Month. https://new.makethemonth.ca/
National Film Board of Canada. (2003). No Place Called Home. https://www.nfb.ca/film/no_place_called_home/
National Film Board of Canada. (2009). Four feet up. https://www.nfb.ca/film/four_feet_up/
Poverty. UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/topics/poverty
World Health Organization. Poverty. World Health Organization. https://www.afro.who.int/health-topics/poverty
Project Plan:
| Task | In WordPress | Group Member | Due Date |
| Overview | – A concise definition of your topic, citing at least two academic sources. – A description of your learning context and learners e.g., educational background (high school students, post secondary students, professionals) age, interests, lifestyle, prior knowledge and experience, and any specific learning needs – A description and rationale for the learning theory behind your design choices (behaviourism, cognitivism, or constructivism). Why is this theory a good fit for your topic? – A description and rationale for the learning design you chose (inquiry, project-based, direct instruction, etc.). Why is this learning design effective for this topic and context? – A rationale for your technology choices | Kylie | June 3 |
| – Your plans for designing for the inclusion of diverse learners using UDL and CAST principles. | Emma | June 3 | |
| Hook/Introduction | – Briefly introduce the big idea – Short introductory video on poverty in Canada? – Poverty statistics in Canada? – Question? – Short overview | Sophie | June 15 |
| Specify Learning Outcomes | – Write out learning objectives that address essential questions. | Marco | June 3 |
| Learning Activity (Factor – Health) | – Content – article, video – Create interactive learning activity (multimedia quiz questions embedded in video) | Emma | June 15 |
| Learning Activity (Factor – Cost of Living) | – Content – video, graph (UE/LFP rates) related to multiple choice quiz | Sophie | June 15 |
| Summary of Content? | – Briefly summarize the factors? | Sophie | June 15 |
| Assessment Plan | – Including formative and summative assessment activities, how you will provide feedback and how you will determine a learner’s final standing in relation to the outcomes (e.g., a proficiency rating, complete/incomplete, a percentage, or a letter grade). How confident can you be in your determination that the outcomes have been met? | Marco | June 20 |
| Assessment (Multiple Choice Quizzes) | – Create quiz (What factors of poverty are present in this situation?) – How feedback will be provided. | Kylie | June 20 |
| Assessment (Discussion Post) | – Create rubric? – Explain expectations (Explain one factor of poverty and try to come up with a solution. Or provide a specific scenario and come up with a solution. Comment on 1 other classmate’s post – peer assessment). – How feedback will be provided. | Emma | June 20 |
| Self-Assessment of Learning Outcomes | – Explain self-assessment (Scale of 1-5 do you feel you understood…) | Kylie | June 20 |
| References | – Put reference list together (APA) | Emma | June 20 |