Saturday, November 14, 2009

Learning Now

Angela Maiers has an excellent post on her site about Learning Now.
It is a “new” way of starting the day in the classroom.
As students walk into the classroom, the following opening question is posted:
What have you learned since yesterday?
Students need to be excited about their learning and realize how much they have learned and how much there is out there to learn.
Learning is not an endeavor just for school. It is learning that fuels our lives. It brings the outside to the inside of the classroom and vice versa. Learning is perpetual, continuous, and requires us to be active. Learning – as we know it, and as we wish our students to know it - is infectious and contagious. It is PASSION-DRIVEN!  Passion-driven learning is not contained in boxes, covered in textbooks and will not be reduced to checks on a list. It must be experienced.
We are always talking about being Lifelong Learners,” but that phrase, that name, is not just a bunch of fancy words.  It should have meaning.
Until we can get students excited about learning and excited about their learning, we have not done our job.
There will not always be a teacher there next to them to tell them what to do next.  Students need to develop this love of learning and excitement to want to know more.
The Learning Now opening not only lights a spark of excitement and energy, it sets the tone, the expectation, and it extends the invitation to "Join the Learning Club, ' which is how we frame the rest of the day as we spend our time together figuring out how to make sense of this amazing world and the people that inhabit it. How far can we take it?
This is a wonderful way to start the day. I wish that all classrooms were started this way…
How can you develop
this energy,
this passion,
into your classroom?
Let me know.
[As always, in my author quotes, the underlines, color changes, and bold type is mine, not the author’s!]

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