Students are like sponges; they are always learning something. However, we want them to be more than the passive learner that this suggests. We want them to actively learn – desiring to learn and to think critically as they research and discover. We want them to have fun learning. It is my job to spark their curiosity, to fan the flame as they pursue knowledge and solutions, so that they become lifelong active learners.
I believe that I need to:
- Set an example by being a lifelong learner myself.
- Provide students with challenges and real world problems that spark their curiosity so there is purpose in their learning.
- Direct them to content rich websites, books, online databases, and videos that they can access at their own pace.
- Encourage collaboration.
- Give them options to make meaning of their content gathering, allowing them to be creative.
- Stimulate new questions on ways that the knowledge they have acquired can be applied to other areas of their life, and so start a new cycle of learning.
- Use varied length and type of relevant assessments that will reach all kinds of learners and even allow students to help in determining appropriate types of assessments.
Students need to feel connected to the content in order to learn. In between an experiential activity (simulation, community project, or even art) and a real world problem to solve, comes the desire to learn. This is the point at which I provide them with content rich websites, books, online databases, videos that are accessed by students at their own pace without fear of holding others back, or without feeling like they are being held back by others. Students can then begin to find the implications of what they have learned through collaboration and tangible reflection. Solutions to a problem may lead to application to similar problems. Even failures are a new learning platform.