Hi Bloggers,
As I was searching for information for my Lessons, pertaining to the standards (as this is a new aspect of my Lesson Plans), and I came across the following information and found it to be interesting. I found that it was not only interesting for the Lessons but also for conducting the research project.
Taken from, Benson, 2003, p. 86-87 under the title
“Teach Students the Learner Action Cycle”.
Box 4.2 Students Using Learner Actions You have a new assignment so you access by listening, observing, reading, and researching, and what you have is a lot of information. So, you must interpret by selecting, classifying, outlining, sequencing, and comparing, and what you have is your focus. Then you must produce something by designing, creating, planning, building, or writing, and now what you have is a product and knowledge that you have to disseminate by teaching, presenting, and explaining to the audience for your learning. All along the way, you must assess your performance by reflecting, evaluating, and planning for the next time, and what you have is a goal and strategies. |
Having students actively involved in the learning cycle of assessing, interpreting, producing, disseminating, and self-assessing is the secret to meeting the content standards now required by state and national documents. If teachers are going to teach the processes in the standards along with the content, they must take students through this cycle as many times as possible so that the process becomes a part of their natural programming. Once this happens, students will have a recipe for success whenever they have to learn something new and use it.
Hope you find it of interest.
(Benson, B. P. (2003). How to meet standards, motivate students, and still enjoy teaching: Four practices that improve student learning. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publication, USA.)
Learning is about process and practice and this method promotes both. There is an inbuilt revision mode throughout the process that forces one to be consciously aware of what he is doing. The refelction and evaluation aspect of the porcess promotes and encourages critical thinking which I like, especially as it seems to flow naturally through the process.
ReplyDeleteI'll certainly look into this strategy some more
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ReplyDeleteHi Clara,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the information regarding the Learner Action Cycle. I found this quite helpful as I was able to incorporate the concepts into one of my lesson plans. This particular lesson involves the students in researching a particular topic. I wanted a process where the teacher would guide her students through applicable stages in the process so that they would know how to manage, interpret, select and classify the information they will collect during their research. I believe this cycle can be adapted to suit other learning tasks. Thank you, Clara.
Lemoy