Design with the 4 A's
Another popular method for facilitating active learning when designing lesson plans is Jane Vella’s 4 ‘A’s framework from her book Taking Learning to Task: Creative Strategies for Teaching Adults. This framework focuses on listening to the student’s voice and involving them as decision makers in their own learning. The framework provides four key steps you can follow to design lessons that ensure active learning is being implemented.
“Teaching can get in the way of learning. The design of dialogue education, formal or informal, protects learners in their learning from teachers that could steal the learning opportunity from learners by telling, or ‘helping’.” (Vella, 2008 p xxiii)
The 4 A cycle
Your lessons should include an iterative cycle of:
- Anchor: Get students to connect with prior learning and anchor to new experiences. This also serves to develop the social climate and build personal connections among students.
- Add: Provide students with new information/content. This is where you can introduce new information while making links with prior knowledge and preparing them to apply their learning.
- Apply: Provide opportunities for students to immediately apply their new knowledge to a task or activity. This is where you can design activities that will get students to read, write, reflect, create something based on the new concepts, principles, and steps covered in the Add cycle.
- Away: Get students to use the new information/content they have learned and apply it to their assessments or other tasks outside of the classroom.
In the synchronous session, you will cycle through anchor, add, and apply as you introduce new concepts, principles or processes. The away phase is then left for the end of the session where you will need to tie in all the different new content that you have covered in your session.
These steps may be used at a macro level when designing a full lesson plan cycle or at a micro level within each activity itself.
At the macro level, ensure your whole lesson plan follows the 4A’s cycle:
- Anchor the students with prompting questions to get them engaged in the lesson.
- Add the new activities and knowledge in the lesson.
- Get the students to apply the new knowledge in your lesson.
- Get the students to apply the new knowledge outside the classroom.
The 4A’s cycle can be applied to each activity introduced into your lesson:
- ‘Anchor’ your students in each activity. Ask prompting questions before you introduce the activity, get them connected to why they should engage in the activity.
- ‘Add’ information on how your students will participate in the activity and how it connects to their learning (why are they doing the activity),
- Get the students to undertake the activity (apply)
- At the completion of each activity, discuss the results with your students and ask them how they think the activity applies to their learning outside of the classroom? (Away)
- ‘Anchor’ the students in the next activity by building on how it will build on the activity just completed.
NoteAn important point to remember when implementing the 4 A’s cycle is to make sure you close the loop by following up on how students applied the previous lessons knowledge. This can be achieved in the Anchor section of the next cycle of the 4 A’s framework. |
Steps for writing a lesson plan using the 4 A’s
Implementing this framework requires you to be open to some flexibility with your lesson plans. You may need to adjust your objectives depending on what you discover from your students at the various stages of the lesson. There are some key points to remember when implementing each step of the 4A framework to ensure your lessons are effective.
Before you start writing your lesson plan
Before you start developing a lesson plan using the 4 A’s framework, remember to apply the 8-steps principles of planning to ensure you know who your students are. These were discussed in detail previously in ‘What do you need to consider before getting started?’
Click on the plus icons to learn more about the different steps.
Here are some key questions to consider before writing your lesson plan.
- Think about what outcomes you want to achieve during the lesson?
- Think about how the objectives of the lesson link back to the Learning Outcomes of the unit?
- Use Bloom's Taxonomy Higher order thinking verbs such as apply, analyse, evaluate or create in your lesson. View this guide on how to write learning outcomes.
Closing the loop
As you move from one phase to the next it is important to remember to close the loop of the content and activities that you worked through in the session. This will give students the opportunity to get your insights and feedback and for them to share their learning. Here are some simple ways you can do this.
- Leave 5-10 minutes at the end of the lesson to get the students to reflect on one new thing they learnt.
- Undertake a quick reflection/discussion with students to check their understanding. You can do this by asking the following questions:
- What? What did they learn?
- So What? What was significant to them about the new knowledge they discovered?
- Now What? How will they use the new information in their practice?
NoteRefer to the Active Learning Cards for inspiration. Think about a combination of both synchronous and asynchronous activities. |