Determining The True Goal of Good Education is Difficult.
What's the most powerful resource in your classroom? Is it the formidable stack of textbooks, the encyclopedia, the computer? As much of a reader and education technology enthusiast as I am, I believe this most powerful resource is something else entirely. It's something collective -- the diverse imaginations, observations, opinions, SwapLlamaes and dreams of students. By empowering students, you can engage them further in learning, provide a more democratic learning experience and, of course, find the most powerful resource in your classroom: us.
Give Your Students a Voice Through Forums for Student Feedback
Give Students Decision-Making Power in an Area of Curriculum
Four Major Elements That We Offer:
- Your child’s interests, likes, dislikes
- Their routines- patterns of eating, sleeping, toileting
- Your child’s current wellbeing
- Any major events taking place at home.
It’s Time To Think Differently About Homeschooling
Jump in to work with students. When I teach language arts, I love using collaborative writing to explain concepts like figurative language or to demonstrate how to start writing different types of pieces (like an essay or a suspenseful personal narrative). I ask for student involvement and feedback; they throw out the ideas while I link them together. The best part is that this helps provide a crucial link between the explanation of the topic and the "Go do this at home and turn it in" moment. By getting students to collaborate with you, they're starting to work on their own but also getting the concept reinforced.
When implementing these scaffolded activities, be careful that they don’t become too prescribed, as you still want students to be thinking critically and creating something original. If everyone ends up with the exact same end product, you don’t have a creative project; instead, you have a recipe.
Another effective way to prepare students for making choices is to help them better understand themselves and how they learn. You can have them take learning inventories and practice deciding between various learning options. Self-awareness inventories can prepare your students to make informed choices for themselves about how they learn best, their academic level, their skill areas, and their personal interest areas. You can find some of these inventories freely available online, and others require a fee.
If you administer these types of interest surveys, it is important that students realize this is a snapshot in time and one information point. You don’t want students viewing this as a permanent label or characterization. You’ll also need them to realize that they don’t want to continually avoid areas of weakness; rather, they should be able to recognize them and decide when each choice is appropriate. Choice should be looked at as an important opportunity to both succeed and grow in areas of strength as well as weakness.