I found this week’s read to be extremely intriguing and mind boggling. The article this week had ample relevance in education today. “Great Teaching Means Letting Go” written by Grant Wiggins in my opinion challenges many school districts/state curriculums. According to Wiggins, everywhere he goes he sees more scaffolding and prompted teaching. Are the students learning to be independent learners? Are they utilizing analytical and strategic thinking skills on a daily basis or are we spoon feeding them to memorize facts in order to gain success? It is ironic I read this article today because a colleague of mine just gave me an idea to have a “board game” day with my students weekly. We expressed how the students are using their strategic thinking skills enough and we are afraid that will impact them for life long learning. I know scaffolding in most education facilities is preferred, we have all heard of the “I do, We do, You do”. I have also watched colleagues and have had former instructors give study guides that are apparent replicas of a proceeding assessment. To absolutely agree with Wiggins on this topic, when you are doing that you are setting students up to perform “script like” activities. We are training them to memorize information not learn and synthesize information. We are teaching them “fact fluency”. Inquiry learning is an efficient strategy to promote independent or “unscripted” learning. Students will become eager to learn, analyze, and analyze their own thinking. The webinar viewed, Chris Lehmann – Inquiry: The Very First Step in the Process of Learning hit the nail on my beliefs pertaining to the connection of inquiry learning. Lehmann states “inquiry, at its root, is the idea of intellectual play. The idea that we can get our hands dirty, we can ask powerful questions, we can seek out answers, and we can really add that time and space to play with our ideas.”
References
Wiggins, Grant.(2019 March 13). Great teaching means letting go. https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/great-teaching-means-letting-go/
Connected Learning Alliance. (Producer). (2013). Chris Lehmann- inquiry the very first step in the learning process [video webinar]. Retrieved from https://educatorinnovator.org/webinars/chris-lehmann-inquiry-the-very-first-step-in-the-process-of-learning/
I believe that all educators to some degree has a hard time "letting go" of their students and let learning happen. I know that I like to be in control and worry sometimes what may occur. It's important that we believe in our students and that we encourage them to develop the skills necessary to be independent driven learners. Often times we let the test drive our instruction instead of letting learning happen. I believe that it is important that educators are instructed on how to make this happen. We have been so used to teaching the standards that we often forget to let the students learn.
ReplyDeleteI am definitely in the boat of having trouble letting go. It was hard enough to implement centers (I just completed my first year teaching) because oh my goodness I had to trust that 3-4 groups of students would complete their work while I worked with the other group?? It was hard, but they were self motivated and it worked beautifully. With that in mind I know it's very possible for teachers to let go just a bit more so students and can fully explore what they've been taught independently and authentically.
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