How I believe students learn?

          During class yesterday we took some time to ask ourselves what we think students learn best and then again today. My go-to answer was collaboration. Now, I think what about the collaboration makes learning great. I really like this video on creative collaboration and is something I want for myself and my students. Looking back to my favorite lessons or wrap-up projects to the unit, were ideas that I wanted to try with my students. Some assignments I would assign with no idea what the ending result may be. I needed my students to help me shape what the final product would look like. It's almost the risk itself is worthwhile to see if "hey, this is going great" or "backup, back up, bad plan, HELP!" that makes learning interesting. Giving the time for my students to discover or "play" with the ideas they are learning. I also want to put my Welsch hat on and think of way to help my students spark their drive to learn and getting them thinking together. I don't want them to memorize facts just for the test I want them to continue to collab and explore new ways to apply it to their interests.

        

           To sum up my thinking, I believe in collaboration and co-constructing with my students and giving them time to explore. We are a community. There are some days where we have to take notes and it can be a teacher-centered day but the application happens as a group. I want to add more opportunities for my student to discover and share with each other. I also would like to create a space to do where they can display their favorite creations/work, where it can be a science response, a diagram, a math project result, a student portfolio? Especially thinking about how will I do this is in the fall or when we really return back to school face to face. My belief relies so much on the in-person aspect even I haven't verbalized it until now. How will my favorite teaching moments translate online if that is what we have to do this coming school year?

            There is one project I do every year in math and couldn't this year because of distance learning. The students had to work together to create their dream home using the area formulas we learned in class. The first time I did this project I pushed the desks out of the way to make a huge space for the students to work on (probably wasn’t the safe thing) and a huge piece of grid paper to make their homes. I had my expectations and requirements for their homes and the design was totally up to them. Now, I take more space planning time but still in a group format where they can share ideas and resolving conflicts with the equations or style differences. It would great if I could how to bring it to the digital world, still make it collaborative, and keep the hands-on. I have a few ideas just based on this week. Still thinking about the how.

          I wish I had more to share. A lot from two years ago are still hanging in my room. Here's is one I happened to have on my phone!