I am sitting here listening to Barbara Anne Alexander ask great questions and these have prompted my own...
- How focused are our students on learning in the classroom?
- Are they aware of why they come to school and into our class?
- How willing and able are they to discuss/share their learning, valuing working as an individual and as part of a team. Celebrating our differences.
- Do they see themselves, and me as both teacher and learner? Celebrating their thinking, having a go. Being part of a learning community, knowing what it is to learn and why? Knowing how they and others learn and taking an active response in this, excited by the opportunities.
We are focusing on Enriching a Learning Culture. Sadly too many students never get the chance to explore “What makes a Great Learner?” or “How Do I Learn?” Yep, students year after year, are still ‘doing’ “Who am I?” at the start of each year. What a waste! Surely they know who they are!
What difference will studying this again at the start of each and every year, make to them? Let’s all embrace the learning culture and make our classrooms all about learning – a real live Learning Zone. Our role as teachers needs to be on learning, having learning focused conversations, asking children what they are learning, why they are learning and how they are learning it and equipping people to become real life long learners who value their school, their classroom, the Principal and their teacher as deep and meaningful sources for learning.
Activities:
- Find quotes about thinking and learning and display them, posters around the learning zone
- QLC – Take a quote and pull it apart.
- Give chn the recipe for success, the cheat sheet to success is the curriculum
- Y Chart “Learning” Revisit at a later time.
- Poems about learning e.g. Acrostic, Definition
- Little Red Hen – Who is going to help us learn – We are said the Parents, principal, etc.
Where do you want your class to be?
The Key: "Not we are learning to" but "We are learning how to..."
Bronwyn is sharing her classroom practice in this area on the 26th April. Can't wait!
"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write,
but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
~Alvin Toffler
4 comments:
http://flock.com/
Flock is a wonderful web browswer that many Web2.0 people are changing to instead of Internet Explorer or Mozilla. It is a little slower but integrated seemlessly with Delicious Blogspot and Flickr so you can up have blog with your Flickr photos from within the web browser as opposed to going to a separate site.
All kids have to do is drag their flickr photos into Blooger post window.
All very cool. I would recommend a look anyway.
Allanah
Thanks so much for this tip and for posting it up. Will definitley check it out over the holidays. It is so good to learn from others who have already looked ahead.
Best wishes
Lorraine
What good ideas you have gained in regards to learning!
I love the part about discussing/teaching about learning with our kids, it has been my main focus for our this term's topic.
The idea of WALT changing to we are learning HOW to is also an interesting one which I will consider.
Many thanks for sharing your notes from this workshop. Sounds like you got a lot out of it.
Kind regards, Rachel
Loved getting your comment Rachel. Thank you. Blogging is such a good way to reflect and share learning and a good source of notetaking to come back and refer to. I heard of a class teacher who has his students take notes into the class blog for each maths lesson. Another is the photographer capturing images used in the lesson. These too are posted. The blog then becomes the class notebook for reference and sharing. What an awesome idea. This would be a great way for those who are absent to catch up too. Perhaps I can use the web in similar ways too.
Best wishes
Lorraine
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