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4mation Instructional Design

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1K views7 pages

4mation Instructional Design

Uploaded by

Deep Kaur
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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4mation Instructional Design

As we are aiming for an inclusive classroom that can be augmented with a Spiral 4MAT
instructional framework to cater to diverse students needs, in-depth understanding of
4MAT cycle is essential. Dr. Burnice McCarthy, a teacher with 30 years of teaching
experience developed the 4mation instructional cycle around 1970, and since then, its
been modified and informed by current research in the field of education (online,
accessed on 2015). This model is predominantly inspired by the work of John Dewey &
David Kolb, essentially focusing on the importance of self-exploration, inquiry and
experiential learning (Kolb, 1984; Miettinen, 2000). Also, the 4mation instructional cycle
is also a brain-based instructional cycle, which relies on Joseph Bogens work on the two
hemispheres of the human brain and their different ways of processing (Oransky, 2005).
Like many theories, such as a little of bit of behaviorism, constructivism, information
processing theory, research in the field of neuroscience coincides with 4mation
instructional design, we believe, this instructional design may help educators develop
inclusive and differentiated lesson plans. Thus, this paper provides brief information
about each stage of a 4MAT unit plan along with stage appropriate instructional

strategies.
1. Connect: Create a reason to learn the concept and to create curiosity.

Teachers Role - Motivator, Method-discussion, Question to be answered - Why?


The objective is to allow the learners to enter into the experience, to engage them, and to
integrate the experience with personal meaning. The connecting activity must embody the
essence of the concept at a simpler level, in order to prepare the students for the
complexities that lie ahead as they move around the circle.
Instructional Strategies

Physically demonstrate the importance of the concept.


Create a scenario
Drama
Experience an Analogy-Simulations
Past Experience Drawings
Step into a picture
Create an opposite experience
See/feel the importance of a concept
Create a dialogue from an image
Elicit personal reactions
2. Attend: Reflect on Experience

Teachers Role - Witness, Method - Discussion, Question to be answered - Why? The


success lies in the quality of analysis. Learners examine the experience. The method is
discussion, but the focus has changed. Learners are asked to step outside the experience
and look at its parts. There are two things to guard against: one, getting too technical in
the analysis, and two, attempting to introduce new material. The experience itself flows
into meaningful reflection and dialogue. The goals that are emphasized throughout the
first quadrant are focusing and generating skills, making meaning, observing, visualizing,
imagining, inferring, connecting, diverging, listening, interacting, and reflecting.
Instructional Strategies

Discuss commonalities
Share perceptions and perspectives.
What is important?
Why so many perspectives?
Journal reflections
Small group dialogue
List metaphors

3. Image: Integrate Observations into Concepts


Teachers Role - Conceptualizer, Method - Imaging, Question to be answered What?
This step attempts to deepen reflection; it is an integrating step. This step is the key to the
learners internalization of their need for further understanding of the concept at hand. It
is the place where they link their personal, subjective experience with the objective,
analytic world of the content at hand. Teachers are moving the learners from the
concrete to the abstract, blending their world of subjective experience with the abstract
theory in the content to come. Educators must create an activity that causes learners to
mull over the experience and reflection just completed in Quadrant One, while deepening
their understanding of the concept.
Instructional Strategies

List metaphors
Pictures from life
Analogs
Enhance with music
Draw procedures creatively
What is important? Draw it.
Build metaphors
Collages
Dramatic exhibitions
Musical/media collages
Enter the art.
4. Inform: Develop Theories and Concepts

Teachers Role - Teacher, Method - Direct Instruction, Question to be answered What?


It is the heart of conceptual information. Information is given selectively to assist in
learner inquiry. Stress information that relates to the core of the concept. The goals that
are emphasized are reflecting, seeing relationships, developing idea coherence,
conceptualizing, defining, patterning, classifying, comparing, contrasting, being
objective, discriminating, planning, constructing theoretical models, and acquiring
knowledge.
Instructional Strategies Interactive lessons
Informative manipulative
PowerPoint/Keynote
Focus lessons on key questions
Fill-in-the-blanks outline or mind-map
Outlines reviewed
Web quests/bookmark building

5. Practice: Work on Defined Concepts (Reinforcement and Manipulation)


Teachers Role - Coach, Method - Facilitation, Question to be answered - How does
this work?
In step five, the students do worksheets, use workbooks, try fixed lab experiments,
employ manipulative that provide hands-on guided practice, use computer-assisted
technology, etc. One can easily see the value of these two steps for all learners, but
exclusive teaching (step 4 and 5- as these steps are teacher centered) in this way
handicaps all learners. We must teach the whole cycle if we are to individualize student
productivity and performance in meaningful ways. In the next few steps learners become
active, and more self-initiating in Quadrant Four.
Instructional Strategies Data Gathering
Experimenting, setting up, observing and recording
Observing others/experiments
Developing hypotheses
Pattern finding
Sketching concepts
Manipulating data
Computing answers
Questioning
Find it, prove it
Creative understandings of the practice
Expanding vocabulary
Data charts
Predicting
Replications
Social reading
Measuring creatively
Omit the irrelevant
6. Extend: Add something of themselves
Teachers Role - Resource, Method - Facilitation, Question to be answered - How
does this work?
The learners are adding something of themselves, messing around, and making the
material theirs. The success lies in the integration of the material and the self, the
personal synthesis, as well as in the opportunity for learners to approach the content in
their own most comfortable way. Teachers provide their learners with the opportunity to
extend what they have learned through making project choices and individualizing their
own experimentation. Step Six of a 4MAT unit is the ideal place for the teacher and
students to agree about the rubrics that will be used to assess the final product created by
the learners. This step moves the students into self-discovery and active thinking. This is
learning by doing, and its essence is problem solving. The goals include resolving
contradictions, managing ambiguity, computing, collecting data, inquiring, predicting,
recording, hypothesizing, tinkering, measuring, experimenting, problem-solving, and
making decisions.

Instructional Strategies Relate Concepts to the Real World


Story writing
Main characters
Poem journal
Extending the senses
Change perspectives
Visible thinking
Interpret
Learner-created guided readings.
Journal/portfolio
Social significance
Field trips
What if
Test prediction/evaluation
Link to effect on you
7. Refine: Evaluate the Extension
Teachers Role - Evaluator/Remediator, Method - Evaluation, Question to be
answered - What If?
REFINE is the step where the learners are asked to analyze what they have planned as
their proof of learning. This analysis should be based on:
1 Relevance to the content/skills
2 Originality
3 Excellence
4 Agreed-upon rubrics from Step Six
Step Seven requires the learners to apply and refine in some personal, meaningful way
what they have learned. The students (as well as peers and the teacher) will be involved
in editing and refining the work that has been done so far, analyzing for strengths and
weaknesses, taking a position, and engaging in productive self-assessment. The learning
is being extended outward into their lives.
Instructional Strategies Help students enhance projects to ensure that they relate to the key points and essential
question.
Edit projects
Link back to original outcomes, goals, questions.
Rubric agreements
Summary graphic organizers

8. Perform: Adapting it Themselves and Sharing What They Create With Others
Teachers Role - Co-Celebrator, Method - Self - Discovery. Question to be answered
- What If?
In the last step of the 4MAT unit, PERFORM, the learners share what they have learned
and created with each other, and perhaps with the wider community at large. This is the
place where students are asked to stand and speak in their own voices as they share in
their own best way what it is they have learned from the cycle they experienced. The
goals that are emphasized in Quadrant Four are creating, identifying constraints, revising,
creating models, coming to closure, editing, summarizing, verifying, synthesizing, representing, reflecting anew, re-focusing, and evaluating.
Instructional Strategies Media Presentations
Presentations with audience impact ratings
Portfolios
Community celebrations
Student art shows
Gallery Walks

References
4MAT MODEL OF LEARNING (n.d.). Retrieved August 10, 2016, from
http://www.sacsa.sa.edu.au/content/doc_fsrc.asp?ID={2684DC74-724C-41E78FDA-135FC31805DB}
4MAT Lesson Plans. (2016). Retrieved August 10, 2016,
from http://www.4mationweb.com/4mationweb/4mation.php
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and
development. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall
Miettinen, R. (2000). The concept of experiential learning and john dewey's theory of
reflective thought and action. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 19(1),
54-72. doi:10.1080/026013700293458
Maccarthy, B. (n.d.). About Learning. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from
http://www.aboutlearning.com/what-is-4mat
Oransky, I. (2005). Obituary: Joseph bogen. The Lancet, 365(9475), 1922. Orey, M.
(2002). Information Processing. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on
learning, teaching, and technology. 33-49. Available online: http://antimatters.org/articles/73/public/73-66-1-PB.pdf
Puentedura, R. (n.d.). SAMR Model. Retrieved March 12, 2016,
from https://sites.google.com/a/msad60.org/technology-is-learning/samr-model
Vignesh, U. & Asha, S. (2015). Modifying security policies towards BYOD. Procedia
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