Reflection on previous year:

• Model used in the previous year was effective and suitable for her teaching style.
  
  

Highlights of design:

• Students were progressively prepared for knowledge building:
  • 1st round “Earthquake” – for students to familiarize with KF and the learning culture (at the beginning of the school year)
  • 2nd round “Water problem” – for students to learn to formulate questions, build on each other to gain a deeper understanding of the problem, and learn how to use scaffolds, etc. (in the middle of the year)
  • 3rd round “Poverty” – for students to learn to reference notes, rise-above and summarize ideas, and improve ideas, notes, etc. (towards the end of the year)
• Students were asked to formulate their own criteria of a good discussion based on the KB Award Scheme (introduced by CITE, HKU).
• KB principles were integrated into the writing of learning diary.
• Students developed a rubric and performed peer assessment of learning diaries.
  
  

Learning outcomes:

• Decrease in number of notes created by students
• Increase in the percent of notes read by students
• Increase in percent of notes linked
• Decrease in number of note revisions (Some students made a high number of revisions to their notes.)
• Decrease in number of scaffolds used
• Decrease in depth of discussion thread
• Decrease in average number of notes per thread

A possible explanation for the decreases in number of notes created, note revisions, number of scaffolds used, depth of discussion thread and average number of notes per thread in Year 5 is that the module was relatively short, which did not provide much time for note creation and building on.

With the experience from the previous four years, Hidy has devised a pedagogical design which was effective in knowledge building and most suitable for her teaching style. Therefore, in the fifth year, she adopted a similar model in teaching the topic “Children can change the world: Poverty” to her class of Primary 4 students. She further refined her design and aimed at promoting idea advancement through integrating KB principles into the curriculum (e.g. rise above, community knowledge, constructive use of authoritative sources, embedded and transformative assessment). Also, she wanted to facilitate the transformation of individual ideas to community knowledge.