In this day and age of education, our first and foremost
goal as educators is to motivate students to be innovative in their approach to
problem solving. Students must take on
more responsibility for their own learning if they are to be fully prepared to
enter the rapidly emerging global workforce.
For this major leap to occur, our roles as teachers will shift more to
one of instructional coaches or facilitators where we inspire students to
discover within the power to solve real world problems with limited feedback
from us.
Where will the major instructional shift occur? It will move from projects to Project
Based Learning. It will shift from
group activities to team ones. There
will be little in the way of random groupings of students anymore. Instead, student teams will incorporate students
of varying academic and language abilities and their sole purpose will be to pool
their skills to think-outside-the-box to solve real world problems in any of
their subjects-mathematics, science, English, etc. Every team member will be involved in solving
the problem.
So, how will this transformation in learning appear in a
classroom? Below are some possibilities,
but by no means are the only approaches.
We teachers are very creative individuals so feel free to weave in
personal classroom success stories.
1. Teach concepts and
not memorization-if students don't fully understand the "big idea",
they can't apply it to studies. The
inability to make those vital connections will limit their career options in
life.
2. Apply equal
importance to acquisition of key skills and to knowledge building. Teach big
ideas and how to apply outside the classroom.
Common core focuses heavily in this area as well. Teaching ideas and not test items is not
longer the focus.
3. Make reflection
part of any lesson. Learning logs or
journals here are especially helpful to English language learners. With detailed notes written in ways they
understand, they will continue to build not only a deeper understanding of
content, but a richer knowledge of English.
4. Find approaches
you have used in class that accomplished the same. Continue to fine-tune them. Improve on them every time you use them. Share with colleagues and collect feedback.
Build student self-confidence through out-of-the-box approaches:)
Denise
Twitter @ell_teacherpros.
Pinterest denise@ellteacherpros (denise stewart).
