Sequence: KrunicDusica_Year 12 Legal Studies Crime
Sequence Information Sequence: KrunicDusica_Year 12 Legal Studies Crime Description: Subject: Legal Studies NSW Syllabus
Audience: Year 12
Run time: 2 weeks
Resources: news websites, scaffolds for evaluation of sources, scaffold for essay writing
Outline of Activities:
online discussions, webquests, reading newspaper articles online, writing and submitting an essay
Author view:
Audience: Subjects: Language: English LAMS Version: 2.0.4 License: Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike
Support Files: No files Sharing with: Everyone in Public Status: Active Average Rating: Not rated yet! Number of downloads: 32 times Number of previews: 15 times Authored By: Dusica Krunic
Date: 25 November 2007 07:17 PM User Comments on KrunicDusica_Year 12 Legal Studies Crime sequence
Justification for EDUC261 @ MQ UNI
Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) sequence justificationThis LAMS sequence was designed for the HSC Focus Study: Crime within NSW Stage 6 Legal Studies. Legal Studies is “designed to foster intellectual, social and moral development by empowering students to think critically” (Board of Studies NSW, 1999, p.6). This learning sequence attempts to encourage critical thinking through the topic of “vigilante actions”.
By the end of this learning sequence, students should be able to achieve the following learning outcomes:
* evaluate the effectiveness of the law in achieving justice for:
o individuals and
o society;
* analyse information and sources for usefulness, reliability and bias; and
* communicate to analyse and evaluate legal issues and ideas using online discussion and by writing an essay.These learning outcomes have been “designed back” using Spady’s principle (Killen, 2005, p.83) by deriving them from the following syllabus outcomes:
H5.1 selects and organises relevant legal information from a variety of sources and evaluates information and sources for usefulness, validity and bias,
H5.2 investigates, analyses and synthesises legal information from a variety of perspectives and presents the findings of investigations, and
H5.3 communicates through well-structured texts to describe, explain, argue, discuss, analyse, evaluate and apply legal information, ideas and issues using appropriate written and oral forms (Board of Studies NSW, 1999, p. 45).Spady’s principle of “designing back” from syllabus outcomes to learning outcomes is used in order to present students with learning outcomes that they will understand and also to construct more specific outcomes than the syllabus outcomes (Killen, 2005, p.86). In this case, the learning outcomes have focussed on evaluation of the legal theme “effectiveness of the law” (Board of Studies, NSW, p. 47). The outcome which requires students to analyse information and sources prepares students to communicate using the online discussion and the essay format. It can be seen that the directive terms are in the higher levels of Anderson-Krathwohl’s taxonomy (Killen, 2007, p.78), requiring students to analyse and evaluate, thus contributing to several elements of the Intellectual Quality dimension of the Quality Teaching Framework (QTF), including “higher-order thinking” (NSW DET, 2003, p.18), and “deep understanding” (NSW DET, 2003, p.14).
The content of the learning sequence has been developed for the selected audience, in this case, a Year 12 Legal Studies class. The students would range in age from 16-18 years old, and would range in ability. There may be some gifted students, as well as students with special learning needs. First of all, to appeal to this age group, students were engaged through a scenario of a teenager’s bicycle being stolen, which they could imagine and relate to (Woolfolk & Margetts, 2007, p.262). This scenario utilises the “narrative” aspect of the Significance dimension of the QTF, in order to help students see the application of the learning to their own lives (NSW DET, 2003, p.39). Furthermore, students’ “background knowledge” (NSW DET, 2003, p.40) is drawn upon through using the source of a Batman comic, which is part of popular culture that students in this age group would be familiar with. Another consideration taken into account in relation to this age group has been the inclusion of reputable websites which are suitable for adolescents to view, and do not contain any gratuitous sexual or violent content, or encourage students to stray from the task through “pop-up” activities. Therefore, some sources have been copied and pasted into Microsoft Word documents rather than providing URL links. To assist students with special learning needs, scaffolds for analysing sources are provided, thus teaching the cognitive strategy of analysis through prompts or reminders (Rosenshine, 1995, p.267; Woolfolk & Margetts, 2007, p.54; Brabazon, 2005). Extension questions on the scaffolds are provided for any gifted students in the class.
Finally, this learning sequence incorporated the principles of good pedagogy in its design and through the use of LAMS tools. Firstly, the Noticeboard tool was used to outline the learning outcomes to give students an overview of why this learning is important (Killen, 2007, p.136; Rosenshine, 1995, p.266; Woolfolk & Margetts, 2007, p.262). Secondly, the activities were sequenced so as to present material in small steps (Rosenshine, 1995, p.264) by moving from simplified material (e.g. Batman comic) to the more complex media article. The online discussions prompt critical thinking through posing divergent questions that have multiple possible answers (Gibbs & O’Sullivan, 2005; Knowlton, 2001). Moreover, in order to promote critical thinking, the sequence included preparation for the discussion (Killen, 2007, p.132) by requiring students to read media articles, complete scaffolds and prepare notes in the Notebook. To help students realise the value of group discussion, they were required to submit their scaffolds both prior and post-discussion so they could compare the difference in their understanding and receive feedback from the teacher after the discussion (Michaelsen, Fink & Knight, 1997). Prior to some discussions, students were also asked to make a choice by Voting to foster critical thinking during discussion (Gagne, 1970, as cited in Michaelsen, Fink & Knight, 1997). The synchronous discussion tool, Chat, is used to promote greater interactivity within smaller groups (Bump, 1990, p. 54-55). The asynchronous discussion tool, Forum, was used to allow students to access the final discussion from home (Phillips & Santoro, 1989; McComb, 1993). Students are able to reflect on the discussion by writing in the Notebook which appears after the discussion (Killen, 2007, p. 152).
