#clmooc #makeaninquiry Getting Started
Michael Weller asks questions. He’s a reflective teacher in the best sense of the concept. In that questioning about his practice, as a connected learner, he has invited others to join in the journey to become better teachers, focused on improving one’s pedagogy. Michael is part of the team at #clmooc, where the invitation began. I’m late to the inquiry party, whose hashtags are #clmooc and #makeaninquiry.
I have been thinking about it, and my musings are captured in Blendspace here.
Concerns
- testing, testing, testing
- students as persons, not numbers
- lack of joy
- students playing the game of school
Wishes
- students are self-directed learners
- students discover their talents, interests, and passions
- my classroom helps them get to those places
Constraints
- expectations of compliance to education mandates
- testing, testing, testing, and more testing
Wonderings
- Creative Schools Book Club [Voxer]; Creative Schools by Ken Robinson
- How can I bring natural learning back to the classroom?
- Digital Portfolios Book Club; Digital Portfolios by Matt Renwick
- How can I help students create a footprint of their accomplishments to show they are not a number?
- Minecraft EDU; Summer Institute by Lee Graham of University of Alaska
- How can I implement MineCraftEDU as a creative and critical thinking learning environment?
- Units of Study Writing Curriculum review; by Teachers College Reading and Writing Project
- How can I bring authenticity to our reading and writing?
My general question is:
How can I bring authenticity back to the learning environment so students are empowered to become self-directed learners?
Next Steps:
I need to check out the work of others in Make an Inquiry. Michael has started these:
Suggestions?
Categories
Sheri Edwards View All
Geeky Gramma ~~
Retired Middle School Language Arts Teacher ~~
Writer and Thinker
Thank you for the shout-out and your kind words. 🙂 Our inquiry questions are quite similar – it would be interesting to collaborate and/or compare notes on our efforts to create spaces for self-directed learning.
Thanks Michael. It’s a mindshift. What I hope to do is add more authenticity to our class environment. When I taught self-contained eighth grade, I used a studio/workshop approach. We had six mac computers [think jellybean], so I’d do mini-lessons in the early morning, and the rest of the day students rotated to work on computers, projects. small groups, conferencing. It was awesome, rigorous, and fun. I miss those days. So I want to bring that workshop/studio approach back with the learner in mind first, rather than the objectives. I want us to “do” and learn together on the work of readers and writers; the objectives will be met — just not every one at the same time or same way, or the same objectives. Collaboration would be awesome. Are you thinking of working through Youth Voices? I have middle school; You have high school students — perhaps mentors?
I hadn’t thought about using Youth Voices, but that would be an interesting idea. I like the idea of mentors, and I also think my students would benefit from learning with students who live in a community that is probably very different from ours.
I was thinking that YouthVoices would give a focus for both students and teachers — their interests and our curricular requirements. There’s also Teen [ http://tweentribune.com/teen ] and Tween Tribune [ http://tweentribune.com/ ]. My fifth grade students loved the March Slice of Life challenge [ ], and that is also a weekly Tuesday challenge [ https://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/challenges/ ]; some connected teachers set up their own challenge among their blogs [ http://mserin202.blogspot.com/2014/08/slice-of-life-writing.html and http://kidblog.org/class/EaglesWrite15/posts/p464617:601 ]. There’s also KQED’s Do NOW, which I have not participated in, but is so engaging and thoughtful [ http://blogs.kqed.org/education/category/do-now/ ] As I write this, I’m thinking of a menu of choices for writing, with student interest in mind, and an authentic purpose of sharing. Also, I only have about 40 students total in grades 5-8.
These are all intriguing ideas! What do you think about working on this further in the Slack group? We can make a channel specific to our collaboration – it might be easier to have a central space for sharing ideas rather than trying to carry on the conversation across multiple platforms 🙂
Sounds good. One place. Oodles of ideas.
Done! 🙂