Wednesday, May 10, 2017

What People Focus on Becomes Their Reality - Sustaining the Momentum


People live in a world larger than themselves but children are taught within a bubble. Why? Why is it that in life we need to be prepared for anything, and in this preparation, we need to have the appropriate response and be able to use the appropriate resources to formulate that response. If everything is spoon-fed to us in schools, how are we supposed to react at the drop of a hat to something that we never expected? The answer is that we cannot. Teachers MUST model for their students how this thought process works. Unexpected situations cannot doom students to fear and therefore failure. Preparation and reflection are everything. 


The inquiry model of teaching is a fairly new model to the classroom. In saying that it is new, I am not saying that the idea of inquiry is new to the classroom. I am saying that inquiry is newly being welcomed by teachers across the globe. New methods are being created all the time and the sharing of these methods between teachers is constant. [If you have any ideas please share them with me!] In this model, students are asked to pay the closest attention to what matters to them. So in effect, they are not learning a specific topic. They are given a category of ideas or a method of questioning and they are supposed to use the information that is gathered to greater their understanding of the structured topic, or to gain knowledge of how to research and develop ideas upon something that is completely foreign to them. Regardless of the prompts or instructions, everyone participating in an inquiry lesson MUST be willing to reflect fully on every aspect of their process. Did they ask the right questions? Did we take the right steps to find an answer? Is the conclusion a fair one? How can we improve what we did to come to a stronger understanding of the topic or a more appropriate answer?

WE MUST REFLECT ON ALL OF OUR THINKING. OUR STUDENTS MUST DO SO TOO.

This is how we will sustain the "momentum" in our classrooms. If we let students learn what they want and reflect in ways that best motivate them, momentum will not stop. In letting students drive their own learning our learning community keeps growing. (Pretty similar to our online network of perpetual teacher-learners, huh ;-))

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