“If you teach a man to fish, you’ll feed him for a lifetime.” It’s a saying we’ve all heard before. We as educators want to prepare our students for the world we live in, but the world as it is now will not be the world they live in. Thomas points this out by using the fish analogy and saying, “Feed him as long as the fish supply holds out.”. Our world is in a constant state of change, and so should our classrooms.
Every bit of change comes with growing pains and the classroom has been static for far too long. Our students sit as a teacher pours out information to them. Students don’t learn well by just sitting at a desk or on the carpet and being fed information by the chunks. The students who are grade levels behind tend to stay behind. No matter what we do for some students they won’t take anything we teach them because they don’t see how it’s relevant to them. We must reach our students in whatever way we can.
I recently attended a seminar at ETC, the Elementary Technology Conference in Galveston, Texas. The seminar, titled Movement Breaks for a Better Learning, by Laurie Gracie, taught us that students need to move more. The brain wants to learn when the body is moving. A brain in motion stays in motion. Our students don’t learn to the best of their abilities when sitting all day. I’ve seen how teachers have tried to have moving from the desk to the carpets for a whole group, but that’s not the same movement needed. We talk about active monitoring all the time. Teaching is active, and so should learning.
“He’s too low, he won’t catch up.“. I hate hearing this! My heart breaks every time. My heart breaks for the teacher that’s so lost in what to do and for the student who feels that everyone has given up on them. I refuse to give up on either of them. Ever since Covid, we have had more students that are behind. Some with gaps so large it can seem impossible for them to catch up. Many times, it is the teacher getting blamed. Teachers usually have close to 20 students in the classroom. They cannot possibly keep the other 18 growing and bring up the other 2 to standard. This is where good technology can come into play. Sites like ChatGPT can break down concepts so that they can be explained in simpler terms, in ways that are relevant to the student.
“Our kids are bored!” How often do we find ourselves learning something that we have no interest in? We don’t. When we hear information that isn’t relevant to us or entertains us. We dump it from our minds. Our students do the same thing. Our kids are kids, they don’t know how something could be useful to them. We know state testing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. So, if we want our students to pass that test, we need to make the information more relevant than a test. We must make learning relevant to them.
To make learning relevant, we need to take on a new perspective of what learning looks like. In “A New Culture of Learning” by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown you find some great examples of how that would look they explain the importance of a student learning through play. They give the benefits of peer-to-peer learning. They also talk about the importance of students getting excited about their learning, and “Geeking out” over it. When students are actively involved in their learning, there’s nothing they can’t achieve.
“Children use play as a way to make sense of their surroundings.“.(Thomas and Brown, 2011) play is a natural part of growing up. A child often picks up small skills from other children, faster than what they would from an adult. Today’s classroom follows a tradition that is nearly obsolete. In the past schools were designed to fit the stability of a factory. Things remained the same, so they became used to it as they became used to it, they no longer needed play to cope with their surroundings. (Thomas and Brown, 2011) Today everything is changing, our world is in constant flux. Our students need to know how they can learn independently because learning doesn’t stop in the classroom. Students in our own school are experiencing this now with the change a Fort Hood‘s name to Fort Cavazos. As educators, we are given different programs to use constantly. Very rarely do we ever have training on them. Instead, we play with each new feature as we familiarize ourselves with another new thing. Children are the same way. They need the play aspect of learning. Of course, this doesn’t mean giving them an iPad or computer and letting them run wild with the Internet. (Thomas and Brown, 2011)
Each of our students has a strength. Some are easier to find than others but every student has something they are good at. It is the educator’s responsibility to find these strengths and help the students grow to use them. In the past, you would find students sitting in rows of individual desks. This held the concept that learning was done alone and isolated. (Thomas and Brown, 2011)Today we see large tables that seat 4 to 5 students each. This is a wonderful step further into the future but then we do something that holds all progress, privacy folders. During the most important part of learning, we put up folders to block collaboration. Students learn better from their peers. Classroom groups should be based on a group of students who all have different strengths. This is where the teacher is so important. They need to be the ones to encourage different groups and help students to work together with others of different skill sets.
The model I picture is
Whole group instruction
During whole group instruction. The teacher would be watching for which the students are most involved. Those students would then be team captains during centers and stations.
Station, rotation, and small group instruction
During station rotations, team captains would be the ones to lead the other students in whatever the station is. If the team captain does not understand the station, they would then go to the last Captain that was at the station, not the teacher. In the rotation, the teacher is also working with students in the small group to allow for more on one teaching.
Assessments and group assignments
We aren’t getting away from assessments anytime soon, so we need to use them for our and our students benefit. Groups would be reformed based on assessments, only this time the middle-scoring students are the team captains. The highest-scoring students are the Co-captains and the lower students are team players.
This is a plan I would like to use with my Students in my Fab Lab Fridays.
I will build my first group based on who is participating in instruction. Once the project begins I will change groups after seeing which students are working well with each other and which are distracted by other things.
The purpose of this change is to help the middle students and high students further ground themselves in the information and give the lower student a third way of learninrrnbbf4nng. These groups can focus on going back over the test and discussing where each of them struggled. It is not about correcting answers so that the answer is correct. It is important to remember that this method may not work all the time. It is for the teacher to assess what will work best for their class. Sometimes it even means letting the students get really excited about their learning.
“Geeking out provides an experiential, embodied sense of learning within a rich social context of peer interaction, feedback, and knowledge construction enabled by a technological infrastructure that promotes intense, autonomous, interest-driven learning.”. (Thomas and Brown, 2011) We have two lower students to get excited about their learning. When we have that my student finally ground left and got excited about it. We need to foster a culture that encourages growth. Thomas describes getting out as using multiple different media’s hurting. The best way to see this in action would be to allow students to create based on what they are learning. This creation can be done through a form of online media or through hands-on creation. i.e. drawing molding, or writing, whatever message Lexus student really get their hands into the learning.
Getting students involved in their learning is going to take more than just a teacher for it to have consistency. By encouraging our students to get moving and get excited our admin teams need to be involved. With less time for students to get would be less time for unfavorable behaviors to occur. With fewer behavior issues our admin team would spend less time in ISS monitoring students. This would give them more time to get their own work done and allow them to have more time working with groups of students in tutoring and creation. Admin would be able to build lasting relationships with students to further create a healthy learning community for their creativity to grow.
By normalizing several different methods of learning our lowest students could begin to grow. By working with teachers, peers, and admin students would experience the support of an elementary learning network. Our student’s confidence would begin to blossom allowing them to grasp grade-level concepts that they once thought were out of reach. Our students could stop seeing learning as something stressful and hard and instead find the fun in it, ultimately becoming lifelong learners.
When our students find love in learning our teachers can rediscover their love of teaching. Many believe that with too much change, a teacher may no longer be needed. In an era of artificial intelligence, a teacher may be replaced. AI will never replace teachers, but it can help a teacher. For teachers who have to focus on creating lesson plans for 20 students, they can use AI like ChatGPT to create a lesson plan for the 2 students that are still struggling at lower levels.
Change doesn’t have to be scary. Embracing change doesn’t mean you hate the only way. “Embracing change means looking forward to what will come next.”. (Thomas and Brown, 2011)When we face the challenge of a traditional classroom; students sitting during instruction, a lack of organic learning, and lower-scoring students getting left behind, we can focus on new perspectives. We can add play into everyday learning, we can see students working together and collaborating. We can encourage our students to get excited about their learning. Giving ourselves more time to build meaningful relationships with students and fellow educators. We will see our lowest-struggling students grow to love learning. We will see our teachers experience less burnout and find their passion for teaching again, all through a slight change of perspective and a new culture of learning.
References
Thomas, D., & Brown J. S. (2011). A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of constant change. (Vol 219) Lexington, KY: CreateSpace.
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