Professional Learning Goals

• Exposed teachers to the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY technique, through facilitator-led builds
• Identified the key social studies and religious education strands that would benefit most from the technique
• Developed lessons that achieved these goals
• Assessed the efficacy of the technique through the Co-Planning Cycle (co-planning, co-teaching, co-debriefing, co-reflecting)

Activities and Resources

Our project targets teachers who have had no previous experience with the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitation technique.

1. Teachers will participate in a number of individual and collaborative builds that will allow them to experience the meaningful and rich dialogue that is produced, when compared to traditional meetings.
2. Teachers will select a social studies strand, as well as a religious education strand, that is best-suited to the facilitation technique.
3. Teachers, in collaboration with the TLC team, will design lessons that aim to deepen student understanding of the targeted strand or concept.

Resources:

• LEGO StoryStarter Kits (5)
• Social Studies and Religious Education Curriculum Guides
• Mentor texts
• Anchor charts
• ELMO document camera
• iPads

Unexpected Challenges

One challenge we faced was time – we would have appreciated more time to work in one another’s classrooms with our students. We used some of our own class time to complete the lessons we had planned together. Each of the four team members was only able to co-teach with one other member, rather than with each teacher involved in the project.

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

LEGO SERIOUS PLAY was designed to promote creativity within a framework that assures the students have both a rich topic to explore essential skills, as well as the freedom to do so, in collaboration with teachers, to produce meaningful solutions to real-world problems. Not only does this technique lead to rich discussion, it deepens student understanding by allowing the students’ own metaphorical understanding to emerge through the act of building. Each student’s narrative connects their personal understanding of unknown concepts to their own experience. Not only does this result in higher achievement scores, it provides an avenue of deep learning that will stay with the student.

Sharing

Teacher Observation – expose teachers to LEGO SERIOUS PLAY: how students engage in the material and the process, and with other teachers

Build Staff Capacity – develop staff capacity by increasing their comfort with the facilitation technique being used in lesson development

Catholic Professional Learning Communities – LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is successful among all curricular areas. Host CPLC at our school where the teacher experts from this project can meet and share their successes, different approaches, management strategies and assessment techniques around the revised Social Studies and Religious Education Curricula.

Target Audience – teachers from all divisions, including special education teachers, will be invited to observe LEGO SERIOUS PLAY in action, as well as participate in CPLCs that involve the Co-Planning Cycle

Project Evaluation

Our team feels that our project was a success. We appreciated the opportunity to co-plan and co-teach with one another and share in each other’s learning. We feel that all of our students benefited from the project – they were given time to build and share their understanding and knowledge with their peers. This time allowed them to create improved pieces of writing, enhance their ability to communicate orally in a presentation format, and tap into their imaginative thinking.  We determined the success of our students through pre-writing and post-writing activities, as well as through moderating students’ samples of work.