Week 3 - Redesign

Big Idea:  Students are bombarded with many different stimuli every second of every day.  Especially as young kids, they are open to learn anything.  In my last model I talked about how students can be excited to learn anything as long as it is relevant to them.  I stand by this.  But through my readings I am expanding this even further.  Kids can get excited about anything and almost every moment is a teachable moment.  It is our job as teachers to take the questions and excitement that kids have and direct it toward a few specific topics.  This will promote the most growth.  Students need to be taught what to learn not just how to learn in general.  Specific directions and guidance is so important.

Activity:  Every teacher can spend a whole class period lecturing and putting notes on the screen to copy down.  That is the easy way.  But because there is just an endless array of new things to be learned, teachers need to be specific.  This can happen by following up with every kids individually or in small groups and asking questions.  This will help gauge what the students are learning.  In class activities are the best way to do this.  As the students work the teacher can wander around and monitor progress.  This is also the best time to answer questions when learning is put into practical use.

Reflection:  In my past experiences, it is really easy to get washed up in a lot of very broad homework assignments and readings.  This can be very overwhelming.  Specifying lessons and activities in class will help students learn more and it will have better practical application.  The material should be able to be seen in every day life and not seem just like pointless knowledge.  Busy work is not the best solution.  The more practical and specific the activities are the more passionate students will be about learning.  Their questions will turn into more questions, but these questions will be the mark of progress and desire to learn more not just mere confusion.