Pamoja Lesson Suite

Sections

Introduction

Learning objectives

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

  • Understand what the Pamoja Lesson Suite product is and the benefits of importing Pamoja Lesson Suite units into your classes.

  • Customize your lesson planner, resources, and streams.

  • Utilize the presentation mode in a live lesson or while in the classroom.

So far, you have explored what it will take to apply a blended and flipped learning model for your classroom, without focusing on the platform. In this unit, we will focus on how to utilize ManageBac and Pamoja Lesson Suite for a blended learning experience.

This unit will mostly benefit teachers who choose to use Pamoja Lesson Suite within ManageBac and would like to take advantage of all the available features to blend their classrooms.

Pamoja Lesson Suite

Pamoja Lesson Suites are pre-built courses consisting of units, lessons, assessments (both formative and knowledge-check-style questions) as well as Stream & Resources. These will be directly available within the ManageBac Global ResourceBank, and available for all subscribed ManageBac customers to import into their classes.

Pamoja Lesson Suite (PLS) provides access to a variety of IB courses and using these courses will replace the need for any textbooks. The courses can be utilized to blend the learning model in the classroom and allow teachers to allocate their time to focus on their students rather than preparing the content.

Learn more about Pamoja Lesson Suite from the Pamoja Lesson Suite QuickStart Guide.

Available Courses in Pamoja Lesson Suite

Flexible control of your lesson experience

As educators, your time may seem to be never enough to accomplish all that you would like to. Your ultimate goal is to dedicate your time to support your students and meet them where they are. Adding Pamoja Lesson Suite IB courses to your classes will give you access to all ready-to-use units for the course of your choice. These units are designed by Subject Matter Experts who are also experienced in online learning. These exact units are currently used for Pamoja Online Learning Courses, and these online courses are taught by Pamoja Education teachers.

By importing Pamoja Lesson Suite units to your classes, you have the flexibility to plan your units and lessons as desired. You can use them as they are, or you can select specific units, review what's currently available, and have the ability to edit, add or remove resources, as well as the ability to re-order the unit and lesson flow. Importing resources from Pamoja Lesson Suite

How to use Pamoja Lesson Suite to blend and flip your classroom

We learned in Unit 2 that blended learning can look different depending on the model the teacher chooses. For example, in a school that recently introduced the Day A/Day B model, where Day A will be in a face-to-face setting and Day B is for online learning, the teacher can use the imported units to manage and teach their classes. The teacher can use the current streams and resources and share them via the presentation mode feature while teaching in a face-to-face setting. They can then assign students specific assignments to be completed during Day B while working online, with the option to use the messaging system or real-time discussions to ask questions and connect with the teacher if they need to.

Another example would be to ask students to review the content of a selected lesson and to complete a selected assignment prior to the class synchronous time (flipped learning). This way the teacher can use the class time for hands-on activities, group work, collaboration, or higher-level learning tasks.

Customizing

Once Pamoja Lesson Suite units are imported, teachers can customize:

  • the dates they will be delivering these units to students

  • lesson plans

  • stream and resources

Planner customization

From the planner, you can customize the lesson plan for any of the following sections:

  • Summary - Unit title, description of the unit, dates the unit will be covered by the students, duration, and hours needed to complete.

  • Inquiry - This can include essential understandings and guiding questions.

  • Curriculum - This includes aims, objectives, syllabus, content, skills, and standards and benchmarks.

  • Connections - This include transdisciplinary skills, dispositions, international mindedness, academic honesty, information communication technology, language and literacy development, cross-curricular links, and co-curricular links.

  • Design and Implement - This includes:

    • Assessments (formative, summative, peer and self-assessment, standardization and moderation, assessment methods, and assessment criteria),

    • Learning experiences (prior learning experiences, student expectations, pedagogical approaches, teaching strategies, feedback, and differentiation).

  • Reflections - Prior to studying the unit, during the unit, and after the unit.

Customizing streams and resources

From this section, teachers are able to customize the resources by:

  • adding websites or videos

  • adding or linking files

  • adding photos

  • adding a note (a note is only visible by the teacher)

  • adding or removing assessment tasks

  • adding a lesson experience (this includes teacher notes, lesson description and guidance, start date and time, and end date and time)

  • scheduling an online lesson

Teachers can also re-order the stream sections as needed.

Presentation mode

The presentation mode allows teachers to browse all the materials they have prepared within a certain unit and lesson plan, and demonstrate these materials to students either via online tools (Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts) or offline in class using a digital board or projector.

The presentation mode can be accessed in two ways:

  1. By launching the presentation mode directly, or

  2. By using its integration within the online lesson functionality.

Teacher view

The presentation mode will present three vertical content columns.

The left column contains unit details and all resources linked to the unit for quick access during the online lesson. The right column contains a list of members who have joined the online lesson and a chat panel for direct communication with all members. If you have enabled questions, a questions panel for public or private student questions will also be available here.

In addition, the left and right columns can be collapsed in order to expand the central resource column by clicking Enter Full-Screen Mode at the top of the page.

Student view

The student view of online lessons will show three columns:

  • A list of lesson resources in the lesson experience stream on the left.

  • A place to add notes that will remain accessible for the student after the end of the online lesson on the right, along with the student chat and question tabs (if enabled by the teacher).

  • The centre column with shared resources selected by the teacher.

Students will only see the presentation mode screen if teachers have started an online lesson and enabled presentation mode in that online lesson. Otherwise, students will just see the screen for accessing online lessons.

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