Essential Question: How will you design and enact relevant and meaningful instruction and assessment to develop students’ identities, knowledge, understandings, skills, and dispositions to bring creativity and innovation to the world’s most pressing issues? 

Lesson Plan: Chinese Legends Puzzle

This lesson plan reflects my belief that meaningful instruction should be student-centered, collaborative, culturally responsive, and rooted in authentic engagement. Designed through the principles of backwards design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), the lesson asks students to explore Chinese legends in order to better understand how stories reflect cultural values, beliefs, and ways of knowing. Throughout the MTTL program, I developed a growing appreciation for instructional practices that invite students to think critically, problem solve collaboratively, and actively construct meaning rather than simply receive information. This lesson incorporates groupworthy tasks, intentional scaffolding, differentiated supports, and performance-based learning experiences designed to honor students’ diverse strengths and learning needs (Cohen & Lotan, 2014; Darling-Hammond et al., 2020; Berger, Woodfin, & Vilen, 2016). Ultimately, this artifact reflects my commitment to designing learning experiences that foster creativity, collaboration, cultural understanding, and joyful intellectual engagement.

References

• Berger, R., Woodfin, L., & Vilen, A. (2016). Learning that lasts. Jossey-Bass.
• Cohen, E. G., & Lotan, R. A. (2014). Designing groupwork: Strategies for the heterogeneous classroom (3rd ed.). Teachers College Press.
• Darling-Hammond, L., Flook, L., Cook-Harvey, C., Barron, B., & Osher, D. (2020). Implications for educational practice of the science of learning and development. Applied Developmental Science, 24(2), 97–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2018.1537791
• McMillan, J. H. (2018). Classroom assessment: Principles and practice that enhance student learning and motivation (7th ed.). Pearson.
• Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (Expanded 2nd ed.). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.