Week One in Experimentation!

It was a crazy week for me - So that led to some early implementation of Innovative Ideas!

I have had several days out of the classroom for professional development - I had to implement a release of responsibility earlier than expected.

Late last year, I was at a session where some pretty inspiring things were said, the one that resonated the most with me was...

"If you're doing all the work, then YOU'RE doing all the learning".

And thus began my experimentation...

My initial problem was that my students were certainly engaged...

They participated...

They attended...

They enjoy the class...

Their feedback said so too!

But I recognized I was doing all the work - to make the information interesting and exciting and relevant - but that didn't mean the students did anything to integrate the information into their own knowledge base - though they could recall - "A story about something with a ferret..."

So I had been trying to do more... I'm such a sucker...

I figured I'll give them a learning platform that they can use, while listening more, and record while learning - to make their own connections, identify what's important for later and focus their review at a later date.

OneNote Classroom was perfect for that - or would be... but the students still have to take the initiative...

Which meant - I was still doing all the work and therefore by default, doing all the learning...

Now what do you do?

Well... I handed the curriculum over to the students - let them decode what was expected, and create seminars for each other, to present that information, and promote each other's learning.

And it was awesome!

Funny though - they still taught each other by talking and less doing... I'm going to have to find a way to get them to work around that!

So this week - I took it to the next level... Lets begin a semester with:

"They need to do the work!"

So I began with the students re-writing the Overall Expectations in to English that 'we can all understand'! So we all know what we're working towards in order to progress in the course!

Not only that - as I'm working through #InnovatorsMindset , I find out that this 'Empowerment of Students' is exactly what author, George Couros, was advocating for!

My issue was how to move from to the next step of student-centred learning!

And now I have some ideas for that as well!

In another class - students worked in groups to do the research for macromolecules - They're responsible for understanding and figuring out how they work and why - To put together study sheets for the rest of the class - They then have to go through each other's sheets to see in they can understand what is being said... How things work and why... And if not - they have to tell each other where the problems lie, so that they can fix them...

It's Growing Success! Assessment as learning!

Next step - students choose when their ready for their quizzes - 3 different ones, they select the days within the quiz week...

This should be fun!!!!

Fingers crossed : )