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Active Learning and the Big Picture
by Grant Zimmerman

 

Engage Your Students
Involving students in active leaning is my passion. You can engage and motivate your students to do better than their best work by asking them to build challenging products. Using newly acquired information and skills, the students then present their finished products to an audience. Students work harder when they have to perform before an audience thinking, breathing people that live and work in a world outside of their school environment. The heightened level of performance is that same drive that pushes us to do better when we know it counts. Playing tournament level chess produces different behaviors that a casual game. The playground basketball or soccer game involves a different, less demanding skill level, than a “real” game watched by an audience. We do better when we know the result or our efforts counts for something other than a grade. The product is valuable and worthwhile.
Putting these projects together involves two distinct kinds of planning: Plans for the Big Picture and Plans for the Details.
Planning Process
3-Column Map
The 3-Column Map is a graphic organizer used to list and indentify three kinds of learning: factual information, intellectual coaching/skill building, and dialogic skills via the Paideia Seminar. The 1st column might, for example, detail the vocabulary needed to advance understanding. The 2nd column details the skills needed to build the product. For example, this year 85 honors geometry students at Chapel Hill High School, Chapel Hill, NC, built an 18-hole miniature golf course using the principles of geometry and trigonometry to plan the course. Math skills, measuring skills, and the skills needed to use specific tools would be listed in the 2nd column of the 3-column plan. The 3rd column indicates the Seminar texts that would be used to increase the students’ intellectual understanding of the ideas and values associated with the unit of study. In this case, perhaps, a specific section of the Rules of Golf by the USGA might be challenging and ambiguous enough to meet the requirements for selection as a Seminar text. Keep in mind, that a Paideia Seminar is a collaborative, formal dialogue, facilitated by open ended questions about a text. The ensuing process pushes participants into increasing both their thinking and social skills.
Product/Performance
Students become actively involved in their leaning when they have opportunities to choose what they will study. As a teacher, you provide a selective list of product pieces for the students to choose. The product list could include podcast or vodcasts about their research. The product drives the research.
Teacher Calendar
As teachers collaborate in planning the units of study, they make a point to schedule milestones for themselves and the students. Everyone needs to know when activities are due to move through the unit. Do not leave out this part of the planning process. Sometimes that hardest thing to do is to finish and complete a unit. Things just “get in the way” and excuses are made for not completing the project. The end game is important.
Assessment Tools
At all grade levels find ways to involve your students in the assessment process. Ask them what they feel is most important in delivering a high quality product to their audience. If one of the activities that is part of a larger product involves reading or reciting a poem then students should be encouraged to practice public speaking skills. The rubrics and assessment tools are presented to the students before they begin their work. Without question, we all like to understand and know what we are supposed to be doing. Leave a section or two in the rubric for students’ to acknowledge and define what they want to assess.
Next time we will talk about the details involved in planning for the next unit of study.
Grant Zimmerman is a Program Associate and National Faculty Member of the National Paideia Center at the University of North Carolina. He leads educators in Professional Development sessions on the Paideia Seminar and the Paideia Project. Grant is also a Senior Education Consultant with Knowledge Network Solutions—Leaders in Technology Integration in schools. You can reach Grant at gzimmerman@northcarolina.edu.

 

  • Anonymous on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 15:32

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    Applebatch Teacher Community

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