EMPOWERING LEARNERS
As a learning community, students uncover possible success criteria, giving an educator the opportunity to listen deeply, assessing what students already know and understand.
When you give students information that they can use to improve, and they see and understand that they can do it… students will experience feelings of control over their learning …
“…the more students interact with the criteria, the more they are able to internalize look-fors and apply them when assessing the quality of their work or performance.” (Nicol, Macfarlane-Dick, 2006)
When you read the title of this post, did it affirm your thinking or did it evoke a sense of questioning…’But how do I do that?’
“…the most empowering and loving thing we can do is help students learn how to learn for themselves.” (Jackson, 2009)
You’ve heard the phrase making thinking visible. Observing, listening to and conversing with students about their meaning-making is essential. But, in order to do this effectively, what needs to be in place?
It’s tempting to pick an expectation and to ‘turn it into a learning goal’. However, if we’re going to invite students to be active in their learning (to own it!), we need to go beyond telling them what the goal of ‘today’s lesson’ is.
