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Sammy Bogdanovich
Wade McDonald
John Bayerl
Tara Holmin
Brandon Soller
Gaudence Uwamahoro

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Messy Document

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What: A tool to set clear expectations for what you expect students to accomplish, while giving students the freedom to use class-time how they please.

According to Dr. Bilash, Learning Contracts is “an agreement negotiated between the student and the teacher in order to change the student’s behavior and improve their opportunities to learn.” She also adds that this strategy can also involve student’s parents. The contact includes the following points:

1. the goals of the contract

2. the obligations of each party to the contract

3. the time frame within which the terms of the learning contract are to be fulfilled

4. the basis on which it will be determined that the conditions of the contract were met

The University of Colorado Denver’s Center for faculty Development presents us with five elements of learning contracts such as:

Student Learning Objectives (What will student be able to do?)

Learning Resources & Activities (What resources and activities will facilitate learning?)

Learning Products (What are the assignments or learning tasks?)

Completion Date (When will student complete task or objective?)

Assessment Criteria & Standards (How will student demonstrate learning?)

How:
“Here are some useful tips and practicalities for learning contract design:

Start slowly in terms of time, amount of work assigned, and negotiability of contracts.

As your comfort level increases, you can expand your work gradually.

Explicitly teach the necessary procedures and protocols.

Be willing to take the time to teach your management system, which will maximize learning over the long haul.

Analyze and prioritize the things you teach.

Decide what the essentials are.

Think of the important skills and strategies you’ll need to teach directly, as opposed to what the children can get without your support.

Establish a classroom climate that is both challenging and accepting.

Display and publicly praise exemplary student work.

Give prompt feedback. Also allow and encourage peer and parent feedback.

Above all, expect and value student reflection and self-evaluation. Listen to and trust your students. Contracts can be used very flexibly. Scott (the first author)”

Some examples of learning contracts that could be used in the classroom are:

- Learning menus

- Learning agendas
- Think-tac-toes

Some Limitations:

May be challenging to create for students who are used to lecture/exam types of courses.

May not be suitable for content with which students are totally unfamiliar — some initial guidance may be required.

May require modification as the unit progresses — careful thought is needed for how much modification is acceptable, which could be defined at the outset of each unit.

Require that instructors redefine their traditional roles and make the transition from teacher to advisor.

Self-Directed Learning: Learning Contracts

The university of Colorado Denver’s Center of Faculty Development offers a “20 minute course” that details how to create and use learning contracts in all the steps/elements. Here is a sample learning contract to adjust for 5th and 6th Grades. In addition, on can generate personalized learning contracts using this website.

Technology:
- Schoology: Students are able to submit assignments and get any class materials that have been uploaded to Schoology. Teachers are able to use it as a learning management system because you are able to keep track of what assignments students submitted.
- Technology in Learning Contracts depends on the student creativity and the task.

- Learning contract forms are available online. Here are some links to downloadable templates:

https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/tips-students/self-directed-learning/self-directed-learning-learning-contracts

https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/di/cresource/q2/p05/di_05_link_contracts/

Why?
- Contracts can contain both skill and content components, and they are well suited to a differentiated classroom because the components and terms of a contract can vary with student needs.
- The primary target of using learning contracts is to improve some aspects of a student’s performance at school. Therefore, learning contracts

Improve a student’s behavior in class even before a disruptive behavior appears.

Are used when a student is not meeting their academic potential

Engage the student

Encourage the student to explore and experience their interest

Allow the student to develop and gain satisfaction from meeting their goals not working for marks

Teach the student some life skills (being self-directed, setting goals and working toward achieving them).

Does it work? It may not work for every student, but it does motivate many students.

For Dr. Bilash, Learning Contract is effective and works for making students responsible for their learning and managing their disruptive behaviors.

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What: Complex instruction is an instructional model that emphasizes teachers studying their students to gauge which intellectual strengths each student brings to the classroom.
-  It was created based on sociological theories and research
-  It is designed to create and support equitable classrooms for diverse student populations
- It uses cooperative group work to teach at a high academic level
Major components :
1. Multiple ability curricula
2. Special instructional strategies
2. Treatments of status problems

How: Groupworthy tasks are organized around the big ideas, key concepts, and/or major principles of a content area so that all students are working with essential building blocks of a discipline;

call on multiple intellectual abilities, offer multiple ways to access information and resources (including resources in multiple languages), require multiple representations of information, and invite varied ways of communicating understanding so that all students can be full participants throughout the learning process. Typically, there are multiple possible answers and multiple ways of arriving at solutions so it is advantageous for students to bring varied perspectives and to propose different routes forward.

Teachers craft group-worthy learning tasks, organize the classroom for productive collaboration, develop the student’s facility with the academic discourse of the discipline, assess and provide feedback to groups and individuals, and, most important, by addressing status problems that arise in small working groups. In order to attain all of that, it is important to have clear roles for students. However, it is not always a good idea to assign them. The group members will be responsible to work on that. Here are some details explaining the students' roles in Complex Instruction (according to Stanford University).

Note that all small groups  are not supposed to be working on the same tasks. In other words, the rotate to vary activities.

Technology: Complex Instruction involves a variety of technology depending on what the group work requires. Basically, it is used with all the 4 C’s of technology:

1. Communication

2. Collaboration

3. Critical Thinking

4. Creativity

Why?: “The central goal of the model is to enable students from varied backgrounds, entry points, and educational experiences to grow academically and socially in the context of community and group and individual accountability, and intellectual rigor. While the elements of the model are applicable and beneficial in any kind of classroom, it is the intent of the model to help teachers craft classrooms that “teach up”—that is, classrooms in which instruction is designed to cast each student as a serious learner, teach with a growth mind-set, and provide the support necessary to realize those first two intentions” (Tomlinson, 2018, p. 8-9)

Pupils experienced the need for exchanging ideas, investigating more than one solution and actively contributing to the work of the group. As a result, they proceeded along paths that were different from those they were normally expected to take, and reached new and unforeseen solutions (Pescarmona 2011b Pescarmona, I. 2011).

Does it work?

“The results of this study show that CI is a valued tool for promoting the process of participation and overcoming the barriers to dialogue. Not only does it have the potential to change the usual ways of interaction, but it also influences the framework in which these occur. Hence, it may be implemented in training future citizens to take part in democratic dialogue”

It appears that there are many educators who stand by complex instruction in the classroom. Redefining groupwork, focusing on equity, student driven instruction. However I have found it difficult to find data that supports the approach. I can’t seem to find a study with data the shows an increase in test scores or graduation rates, I can’t find hard evidence.

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https://complexinstruction.stanford.edu/videos

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Rachel Lotan on Building Equitable Classrooms

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Frank, T., & Scharff, L. F. V. (2013). Learning contracts in undergraduate courses: Impacts on student behaviors and academic performance. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 13(4), 36-53.

Hood, C. (2016). Learning contracts. In S. Danver (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of online education (pp. 645-645). Thousand Oaks,, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781483318332.n210

Kolodny, G. M. (2002). Rotation station: Implementing complex instruction. New England Research Organization Conference.

Mikeska, J. N., Shattuck, T., Holtzman. S., McCaffrey, D. F., Duchesneau, N., Qi, Y., & Stickler, L. (2017). Understanding science teaching effectiveness: examining how science-specific and generic instructional practices relate to student achievement in secondary science classrooms. International Journal of Science Education 39(18), 2594-2623.

Greenwood, S. C., & McCabe, P. P. (2008). How learning contracts motivate students, Middle School Journal, 39(5), 13-22, DOI: 10.1080/00940771.2008.11461649 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00940771.2008.11461649.

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Instruction and Learning with Technology 

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Instruction and Learning with Technology 