When we talk about self-directed learners, we're not talking just about students being able to work independently, but also that they will take initiative in their own learning. Educator and writer, John Spencer, created a simple and concise visual for explaining self-directed (see below & read his blog post "Taking Choice Menus to the Next Level" for more info).
 |
| Courtesy of John Spencer |
As an elementary school teacher, I fully believe that even our youngest students are capable of becoming self-directed learners. The trick is, how to get them to a place of making their own learning choices, and sticking with those choices when they get tough.
Our First Steps Toward Self-Directed
In my 2nd grade classroom, I've started a few routines to help scaffold the journey toward more self-directed learning. Most of my 2nd graders came to me this year ready to follow directions and complete the tasks offered to them. Asking them to make decisions for their own learning, however, was a bit trickier, and figuring out to support my students' journey towards self-directed learning has become a matter of trial and error.
Here are some of the more successful strategies that I've used so far:
Learning Targets
This was actually a district initiative, put into place about two years ago as we began our PLC (professional learning communities) training with Solution Tree and as one of our schools became an EL School. I mention all of that mainly to say that I cannot take credit for the idea of learning targets, but I can say that the more that we use them in our day, the more powerful they become for helping students personalize their own learning path by giving them a clear target to achieve.
The idea of learning targets is to begin each lesson with a statement of what essential skill the students should be able to accomplish by the end of that particular lesson. It is not the same as the standards, as those are typically what we hope for students to accomplish by the end of the school year. The learning target tells students what I want them to accomplish by the end of just that 1 lesson. We review our learning target before and after the lesson, breaking down its parts and defining important vocabulary, and ask students to self-reflect on their progress throughout. And we don't just use learning targets for academic skills, we also write them to help students focus on "soft skill" goals.
When students have a clear target in mind at the start of the lesson, it becomes easier for them to determine the path they'll need to take in order to reach that target. (Leaders of Their Own Learning is a great read for anyone wanting to learn more about this.) As students have become familiar with using learning targets, they even help me write the targets from time to time, now.Executive Functioning Supports: Our "To-Do" Lists
Executive functioning skills are so important for helping students to become self-directed learners in our classrooms. Directing their own learning requires some type of strategy for organizing and planning learning tasks, monitoring progress, and determining how they'll demonstrate that learning.
One support I've put into place this year for my 2nd graders are our monthly to-do lists. Work in our class is made up of a variety of "must-do" work and choice work (using a version of the Cafe/Daily 5 models). Each time a new "must-do" is assigned, we add it to our to-do list. Weekly, we all take out our to-do lists as a class and review what work we've turned in and what we still have left to complete. It's not a perfect system yet, but it is helping quite a few of my young scholars learn how to balance their time between choice stuff and the required stuff.
Choice Boards
Wanting to find a structure that would allow us to better personalize instruction for the variety of needs in our classes, our 2nd-4th grade teams have adopted the Cafe/Daily 5 model as a way of providing student's choice in their learning, and for teachers to provide more small group instruction. Students love having choice during Cafe time and it also becomes a way to help students learn how to make choices that benefit their specific learning targets.
Because Cafe time is about students learning to work independently for extended periods of time, some training (and ongoing practice) is needed up front on how to maintain focus during work time and on what students can do to help themselves when they get stuck. As suggested in the Cafe trainings, we spent the first several weeks timing our independence and regrouping as a whole class as soon as a few started to lose stamina. We used that whole group time review our progress, record our "stamina times" and refocus on our learning targets.
We also spend a lot of time reviewing what resources students have in our learning suite to help themselves (instead of always defaulting to asking the teacher) and keep these clearly posted on our Cafe wall. As the year has progressed, students are able to work independently for longer and longer periods of time, and are becoming fairly adept at solving their own problems until I'm free for conferencing with them in a small group or one-on-one.
My Next Steps
While we still have a long way to go, it's exciting to see my young scholars inching their way closer to becoming the self-directed learners that we hope they will be by the end of their stay at CSI. Now that my students are showing more independence during their learning time, I want to take additional steps to allow them even more ownership of their learning, including independently designed "inquiry projects" and student designed learning paths. In the coming month, my hope is to start meeting with students one on one to conference about their growth so far this year, and to help them set their own goals for their learning moving forward. I've created a "Learning Goals" recording sheet where each student can track their current learning goals, their personal assessment plan, and their reflections.
No comments:
Post a Comment