Promoting+Student+Ownership+of+Learning

=Meet Your MATCh: Promoting Student Ownership of Learning=

September 2010
Make notes and engage in bursts of dialogue during the Lecture Burst about the topic. This month is all about Promoting Student Ownership of Learning through //purposeful// application of engagement, motivation, and attention strategies:
 * Step One:**



Set a goal related to the topic for the month.
 * Step Two:**

Examine and read information on our WikiSpaces site to broaden your understanding.
 * Step Three:**

Identify and commit to a strategy that you'll try this month.
 * Step Four:**

To the extent that you need or want, work with your mentor to plan for, implement, and reflect upon the strategy you selected.
 * Step Five:**

Collectively reflect at the next professional learning sesson about what you tried, how it worked (or didn't work), and why. Share any additional strategies or resources you found related to the topic.
 * Step Six:**



After viewing the video clip, reflect on the questions below and make notes about your learning on your KWL note making page:
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 * What are the emotions your students have toward learning? Toward school?
 * How might those emotions promote or inhibit their success in your class?
 * How might you shift their thinking to help them be more motivated?

Check out [[file:Assuming the Best by Rick Smith]] for several concrete strategies that help build a safe, structured classroom!
LET'S LEARN ABOUT...STUDENT OWNERSHIP OF LEARNING AND MOTIVATION

====Think about what learners need, and how that plays out in your classrooms. Watch ASCD's video about the whole child, and make connections with what you've learned today about student attention, movitation, and engagement:====

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Select at least one of the articles to read. As you read, note anything that you may be interested in trying:


 * Strengthening Student Engagement: What Do Students Want?
 * [|The Architecture of Ownership]
 * Learning: Whose Job is It?
 * Building Students' Intrinsic Motivation with Five Basic Human Needs
 * Unlocking Motivation

If you couldn't find a new strategy to try in any of the articles, two additional strategies for increasing student engagement and ownership of learning are Tiered Assignments and Student Experts. Learn how to implement them by viewing these PDFs:





View the following video to see what other educators are doing to motivate and engage 21st Century Learners:
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What do you currently know about your students? How might you get to know them better?

 * What do your students currently know about how they learn? How might you help them discover that?
 * What learning styles do you most naturally address in planning and implementation?
 * Which cause you the most discomfort?

Read and surf to deepen your knowledge about the theories of Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles:
Multiple Intelligence theory focuses on what is appealing to a person, not necessarily what he/she is actually skilled at doing. You can have musical preferences and intelligence and never have picked up an instrument. For this reason, it is particularly useful in environments where children lack exposure and opportunity. If you'd like to learn more about what interests your students, consider planning time for them to take a quick Multiple Intelligence Inventory on-line:


 * ==== Birmingham Grid for Learning  ====
 * ==== Multiple Intelligences for Adult Learning  ====

==== Learning styles, on the other hand, focus on how a person best learns. A person's learning style may be the most effective (and most comfortable) path to developing skills related to a person's intelligences. Knowing how one learns best helps a student make logical choices when studying and learning. Consider planning time for students to take a Learning Style Inventory. In the following excerpt from Silver and Strong's //So Each May Learn//, models for creating simply activities to provide choices for students are modeled. You may borrow this book from your mentor! ==== ==== View a couple of the following clips that put the theories of Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles into action. For which learners might these examples be effective? What would you need to learn in order to use strategies like these in your lessons? ==== ==== media type="custom" key="6994143" width="20" height="20" media type="custom" key="6994157" width="20" height="20" media type="custom" key="6994285" width="20" height="20" media type="custom" key="6994443" width="20" height="20"  ====

LET'S LEARN ABOUT... RIGOR AND RELEVANCE
====The words "change" and "reform" have become trite. However, the reality that much of what we do in schools today doesn't meet children where they are looms heavily. The more complex reality, that chilren are not all in the same spot when they come to us, makes our jobs challenging. View this video, and then read more about the connections between what you know about higher order thinking and the Rigor/Relevance Framework:====

Many teachers are familiar with Bloom's Taxonomy, and it continues to be as relevant to our work today as is was over thirty years ago. However, as educators have learned more and more about how we learn, the taxonomy has been revisited and expanded. One example of that can be found in Marzanno's work, where he aligned what was known through brain research and motivation with what Bloom identified as higher and lower order thinking skills.





Taking all of this a step farther, the Rigor/Relevance Framework defines what this may look like at various levels of the written, tested, and taught curriculum.

The Rigor/Relevance Framework was developed by the International Center for Leadership in Education to evaluate curriculum, instruction, and assessment based on the Knowledge Taxonomy and the Action Taxonomy-- making a connection between thinking and doing. If we are to challenge children, we must engage them. Examine the Rigor/Relevance Framework site for more information about planning for rigor.

As you examine the graphics on the site and the video, ask yourself the following questions:
 * Which activities have I planned that promote rigor?
 * Which quadrant am I most comfortable planning for now?
 * Which quadrant might I like to become more comfortable with this year?

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Strategies to consider include the following:


 * Since course titles alone do not ensure rigor, nor is the written curriculum sufficient to meet the needs of all learners, plan your next unit using the Rigor/Relevance Framework from the International Center for Leadership in Education with the intention of creating experiences in all four quadrants. Consider working with a mentor or a group of teachers with common content.
 * Reflect on your content area, and define what it means to be literate in the 21st Century in careers related to your content. Identify ways to intentionally promote literacy by that definition, and select one to focus on for the month. For instance, if being a literate scientist means knowing specialized vocabulary terms, then identifying ways to promote learning of vocabulary would be appropriate. Working with a mentor or department chair for tried and true vocabulary strategies may prove helpful.



//The resources on this page were gathered from a wide range of sources that are individually noted and are being used to promote non-profit professional learning for one time use. The wikipage developers do not claim them as their intellectual property and are grateful to the professionals and researchers who created the materials to improve how we teach children.//