Here, in this article from authenticeducation.org, Grant Wiggins explains Transfer, and offers some ideas of how to consider it in your overall approach to designing learning experiences.

Or homogenizing. Which will it be?

And, while writing-to-demonstrate learning activities clearly provide cognitive load on learners, are we always sure exactly what is being assessed? Are we aware of the way such an assessment structure may cloud a clear view of standard-mastery measurement?

Good stuff.

Enjoy.

Chapter 2: The Art & Science of Teaching

Summary

After identifying key learning goals, the teacher must then figure out the activities or network of activities—what Marzano calls critical input experiences—students need to achieve those goals. Marzano suggests the general framework of the following:

• previewing;
• division of students into groups;
• chunking information in ways that require students to describe, discuss, and make predictions;
• asking inferential questions;
• recording information in various forms of notes; and
• reflecting on the learning.

Stuck in My Head: The Power of Narrative

Figure 2.1 on page 32 says it all, doesn’t it?

Effects of Different Types of Learning Experiences in Nuthall’s Research

How often do we see innocent curiosity in our students–or see it and take full advantage of it? Or even help them uncover it? And here, I’m not speaking about learning being fun, though it should often be that. Nor do I mean student engagement, though that’s close. Not even mere curiosity, though that’s almost it. I’m talking about students being excited about what they’re learning.

I think sometimes teachers get close to exciting their student with learning–maybe even dwell in it for a brief moment. They design a unit with an exciting hook, use an interesting or novel technology, or even have an entire lesson that starts to excite student learning. (I think here about the concept of electrons in an excited state, and how much the excitement level of the electrons can alter atomic dynamics.)

I’m not sure what happens next though: does the student excitement feel like bad classroom management, and so the teacher tones it down, somehow adjusting some abstract knob to “settle the students back down”? Does the local PLC demand a congruent activity with the other grade level teacher that has a different view of what’s important in that learning, and in “aligning” the two lessons inevitably neuter it? Something else?

I have witnessed tragically sparse student excitement. How often have you walked into a classroom and see the greatest portion of students genuinely excited about learning? Not simply moving around in kinesthetic mode, looking lively; not in busy little groups, where all students may or may not be learning at high levels, or where the energy that is found is more the result of social factors than excited curiosity. I’m talking about authentic excitement about learning–about understanding something new that they hadn’t understood before? And how often do we fool ourselves into thinking they are indeed excited about the learning process just because it’s the closest we’ve ever seen to actually achieving that?

I fear that in spite of all our best intentions in structuring, aligning, assessing, grouping, and other pedagogical best practices, we often lose sight of the single most potent tool we have: learner curiosity. When we can activate that–not simply activating prior knowledge, multiple intelligences, enacting rigor and social learning–but honest learner curiosity, then the entire dynamics of the learning process change. Some things become easier, some suddenly out of sequence, and some planned instruction may even become unnecessary.

Without student excitement–without authentic curiosity on the part of the learner–even the most well-designed instruction will usually result in lukewarm learning about–from the perspective of the learners–borderline irrelevant skills and concepts.

And schools become zombie factories.

So what keeps us–or our students–from achieving this mindset? When I was speaking to a colleague of mine about this earlier this week, she suggested that we add teachers to that list of zombies, too. I hadn’t thought about it that way. Maybe it’s because I (perhaps naively) feel capable of delivering non-Zombie-producing instruction. I haven’t taught long enough to have the life beat out of me by over-emphasis on negative issues that can very much masquerade as authentic barriers to authentic learning (though this year, my school has gone to a scripted curriculum, and for the first time since I started this pedagogical venture 4 years ago now, I very much feel all of the “regulation” of education as a heavy burden, rather than as structural and aligning as it is intended to be).

So how does the ever-increasing popularity of PLCs factor into the equation? Or the more common (at least locally, to me) scripted curriculums adopted by districts? Or budget cuts? Not to mention the (at least perceived) shift from standards-based instruction to instruction-as-test-prep.

All valid issues–all the while colliding (rather soundlessly) with the call for teaching “21st Century Skills.”

More later.