Is This Enough To Pique Your Curiosity About Meaningful Learning?

How many things have you enjoyed learning when you didn’t want to learn them? And how much did you learn?

It’s been long understood that children learn best when they enjoy what they’re learning. I believe that, in an ideal world, children would follow their passions and learn through that. For example, if a child has a passion for aeroplanes, it would be easy to incorporate all of the individual subjects into this one topic, and the child would therefore be interested in learning more. We can easily link the child’s interests (aeroplanes in this instance) to all areas of the curriculum:

• English (e.g. writing instructions for how to board a plane);

• Maths (e.g. calculating distances and times of journeys; working out takeoff angles);

• Science (e.g. magnets, electricity, gravity);

• Art and Design (e.g. designing a new logo for a plane company);

• Computing (e.g. programming an ‘aeroplane’ to go from A to B);

• Design and Technology (e.g. building a model plane);

• Geography (e.g. interpreting a map of an island your plane has landed on);

• History (e.g. looking at what life was like in the time when the first plane was built);

• Languages (e.g. communicating with plane enthusiasts in other countries);

• Music (e.g. creating their own music to play to passengers of their planes);

• PE (e.g. training like cabin crew in order to be able to stay balanced during turbulence).

Working within the national curriculum, this means that we have to make the objectives relevant to the children so that, even if they’re not consciously choosing what to learn, we’re making them ‘think’ that they are. In this way, we could plant some ‘bait’ to pique the children’s curiosity.

For example, suppose we’re planning a lesson on magnets. You could, quite easily, begin by talking about what magnets are and how they work. The children would learn, sure, but would they really care? What if you started the lesson by, for example, throwing paper clips at a magnet? I think that if the lesson began in this way, it would be hard for the children not to be curious and want to learn more! I believe that this kind of lesson starter inspires children to want to learn more and, from this choosing, they have more invested in the lesson and therefore will learn (and enjoy the lesson) more.

As good as it is to engage all children in this way, where they all learn the same thing at the same time, is it possible that at least part of the school week could include an individualised curriculum, where children with similar interests work together across all areas of the national curriculum? Which child wouldn’t want to go to school if that were the case?

Assessment For Learning: Why Bother?

Assessment is such a big topic that it’s easy to lose sight of what you’re doing and why. Fundamentally, assessment means finding out what the children know. With this information, we can then help with the children’s next steps in learning; if we don’t know where we’re starting, we can never go on a journey of any relevance/meaning. Try starting a journey without being at the start of that journey!

 

There are various times at which we can assess for learning (or ‘assess for knowledge/skill’). At the start of a topic, we might want to find out existing knowledge – from previous years in school, previous topics in the same year, and/or from their life outside school. Mid-way through a lesson, we might want to check that the children are heading in the right direction and have understood the teaching to a point where they are able to complete the task they’ve been set. At the end of a lesson, or series of lessons, it’s important that we know what the children have learnt; otherwise, what’s the point?

I believe that children always learn. I actually think it’s almost impossible, when you’re new to the world like children are, not to learn. The difficulty for us as teachers is to find ways to understand where the children are in their journey and help them from that point. This is where assessments made in lessons feed into planning; assessment is pretty useless if it’s not used in the planning process.

Future posts will outline specific techniques to use to assess for learning, both formatively and summatively, but for now I just wanted to outline the basics of why assessment is important and give a few examples of how we can use it.

Differentiation: A Happy Medium

The importance of differentiation is obvious: everyone is unique. In an ideal world, teaching would be individualised and tailored to a single child’s unique personality, needs, knowledge, strengths, challenges and goals. Not only is this very nearly impossible in a class of 30 children, it is also not desirable because this individualised approach does not allow for social interaction and social learning.

Differentiation bridges the gap between the individual approach, mentioned above, and ‘one size fits all’ methods of teaching. It allows students to work at their own level with peers of a similar level of understanding/competence. This process also allows for children to work with others with different understanding and competencies. This forms the basis of teamwork: working with others in a way that collates and integrates individuals’ resources and skills in order to achieve an outcome that benefits each individual and the group as a whole.