What is Learning of Significance?
By helping students to make their own connections and understandings, these awesome teachers of significance have helped students to find meanings that will resonate with them.
How to do it?
connect with real issues
right-size the learning task (and then make it even more challenging)
problematize texts
use multimodal prompts and texts
show students how experts make meaning
What does it look like?
English -- a student researchers the war in Afghanistan with a partner and presents his findings about the Soviet invasion, the Taliban, and the U.S. involvement following 9/11. These same students connect this powerful new knowledge to The Kite Runner. In turn, the complex events leading up to and following 9/11 help focus the reading of the novel and vice versa; as meanings become connected, webs of understanding reinforce significant knowledge.
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Science -- a teacher challenges his students to read a textbook excerpt describing cellular respiration in pairs. Each student reads aloud, voicing his or her understandings about what the text is literally saying (paraphrase) as well as offering commentary on the implied meanings that exist in the equations--through cause/effect statements that show an understanding of how cellular respiration really occurs. As a result, the students understand complex processes at work in their own bodies and in the natural world that surrounds us.
History-- a teacher gives students a set of problematic videos offered by a range of history professors on the live of Abraham Lincoln. The students see that historians have conflicting views about Lincoln's motivations and actions and that each historian seeks support for his or her point of view. In this way, the students could see the intellectual rigor that accompanies the study of history.
Math-- in a geo-construction class, students create models of buildings they will create and calculate the surface area involved and estimating materials cost.
By helping students to make their own connections and understandings, these awesome teachers of significance have helped students to find meanings that will resonate with them.
How to do it?
connect with real issues
right-size the learning task (and then make it even more challenging)
problematize texts
use multimodal prompts and texts
show students how experts make meaning
What does it look like?
English -- a student researchers the war in Afghanistan with a partner and presents his findings about the Soviet invasion, the Taliban, and the U.S. involvement following 9/11. These same students connect this powerful new knowledge to The Kite Runner. In turn, the complex events leading up to and following 9/11 help focus the reading of the novel and vice versa; as meanings become connected, webs of understanding reinforce significant knowledge.
Science -- a teacher challenges his students to read a textbook excerpt describing cellular respiration in pairs. Each student reads aloud, voicing his or her understandings about what the text is literally saying (paraphrase) as well as offering commentary on the implied meanings that exist in the equations--through cause/effect statements that show an understanding of how cellular respiration really occurs. As a result, the students understand complex processes at work in their own bodies and in the natural world that surrounds us.
History-- a teacher gives students a set of problematic videos offered by a range of history professors on the live of Abraham Lincoln. The students see that historians have conflicting views about Lincoln's motivations and actions and that each historian seeks support for his or her point of view. In this way, the students could see the intellectual rigor that accompanies the study of history.
Math-- in a geo-construction class, students create models of buildings they will create and calculate the surface area involved and estimating materials cost.
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