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© Please note: The following article is copyright protected. For permission to use in part or whole, contact Susan J. Jones <sjjones1@mac.com> . All use must include credit to the author and inclusion of author's website <www.susanjjones.com>.
Fred Schouten and Engaged Learning
"We’re studying the migration of Monarch butterflies. There’s the Internet. Find something."
Unfortunately, this is a scenario that is being played out in too many classrooms across the nation. The results of this scenario are a waste of valuable instructional time, a danger of children finding "inappropriate" pages on the Internet, and a lack of clear focus for learning. Little or no learning takes place in this situation.
The good news is that there is an alternative scenario that can be found in other classrooms. Excellent teachers in excellent schools are combining a variety of ideas and increasing student learning by leaps and bounds. These teachers combine the focus of learning standards with the ideas of student choice of products to demonstrate learning with identified Internet resources to create stimulating learning activities.
State and national standards provide a good foundation on which to build learning activities. They represent the best thinking of experts in content areas and pedagogy. When students are given a choice of how to demonstrate their learning, the needs of a wider variety of student learning styles may be met. Some students do well when writing research papers. Others communicate better through an oral report supported with visual aids. Still others express ideas better in a more visual, creative format. Technology provides additional sources of information for student research as well as non-traditional formats for the demonstration of student learning.
Imagine this scenario. Three teachers talk about what is currently being studied in their classrooms. The social studies teacher wants to address a standard that suggests students should learn about how individual people have been influential in the shaping of our country. The math teacher wants to address standards dealing with numerical and visual representations of percentages. The language arts teacher wants to address standards relating to communicating in a variety of formats and to developing research skills. They decide to present a multidisciplinary project to the students.
The students will work in teams to research an influential person from American history (approved by the social studies teacher). They are to use a combination of print and electronic resources for their information. The language arts teacher suggests appropriate materials in the Library Media Center, in the CD-ROM collection of electronic resources, and on the Internet. The math teacher uses authentic contexts to instruct the students in the process of creating charts and graphs representing percentages (e.g., percentage of time that an identif Jied person served in public office).
Students research their approved person and begin to construct their final product. Some create a music video or a video documentary. Others create a promotional pamphlet. Still others write and deliver a keynote speech to nominate their person for an award. Other groups design a HyperStudio stack or a Web site.
All of these projects may be graded with a comprehensive rubric that was developed by the teachers. The rubric addresses the number and types of resources used to support the information presented in the product, the accuracy of information presented (including citations in proper format), the use of standard English conventions (spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.), the presentation of a statistical fact as a visual representation of a percentage, and other important features. The r Jubric is presented to the students at the onset of the project, so that it may also be used as a self-assessment tool.
What a difference there is in student motivation and student learning. Why? The activity is more authentic in nature. That is, it relates more closely to real-life applications. It is organized in a more integrated context. It helps to alleviate the idea that subject areas are to be studied in discrete, isolated blocks of time. Students are given choices. The teacher serves as a resource. Students are given the tools and the responsibility for assessing their own work. Technology is used to support this learning, both as a tool for research and as a vehicle for communicating.
This is a very good example of true engaged learning. What a wonderful place school would be if this were the scenario in all classrooms!
email Fred: fschouten@hotmail.com
© Susan J.Jones
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