Session 4: Teaching and Learning

This is the first of the Designing to Support Learning sessions where participants consider how to design experiences to support learning. Participants access their prior knowledge about the relationship between teaching and learning by thinking about and experiencing how the design of different activities affects them as learners. Participants rotate through four activity stations focused on salinity and density that illustrate different designs. They discuss the affordances and limitations of each design, and how the design of each individual activity and also the sequence of their rotation through the activities affected their interest and conceptual understanding. The Learning Cycle is introduced as an instructional model to guide participants’ thinking about how to design activities and learning experiences to support learning. Participants apply their understanding of the Learning Cycle by designing an activity about sand and/or planning their own activity.