The "Big Ideas" and Comic Life

Greetings and welcome to the overall "Big Idea" of our online course!

We will be using the backwards mapping model of Wiggins and McTighe and Understanding by Design.
Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2006). Understanding by Design. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.

We start by "Beginning with the end in mind". What do we want you to know by the end of this course?

Performance Task

Scenario
You have been asked by your principal to design and develop a curriculum related lesson or unit that can be integrated with Comics and the recently licensed Comic Life software and then share it with your staff. In order to complete this request, you must know about the conventions of comics, connect it to Ministry curriculum, know how to collect appropriate and copyright free digital images, and then how to export your final creation into different formats.

Assessment and Evaluation
For a Performance Task, one should create a summative evaluation, (rubric) comprised of overall expectations from the Ministry Curriculum, (what the students have to know) along with the qualifiers from the achievement chart, (how well they know, think, communicate, and apply certain expectations).
For lessons throughout the unit, diagnostic and formative assessment strategies should be used to guide teaching and learning strategies, (check and correct, observation, conferencing etc…)

Throughout this course, the integration of as many subject areas, will be encouraged. Please recognize that secondary teachers are more subject specific so they will have to modify the A & E and learning activities according to their specialty.

Attached is a teacher example of a possible rubric for the project. A student rubric should then be created in "Kid Friendly" language so students know exactly what "target" they have to hit.
**The Art section of the rubric will only apply if explicit teaching of the expectations is used to support student original artwork which can be then scanned into Comic Life.
For more information on assessment and evaluation strategies, click on Elementary and Secondary Fresh AER, (Assessment, Evaluation, and Reporting) for the TDSB.

The animal report attachment is an example of a possible final product.