How much do I care?

Belated post for 2nd Dec
Time to catch up with my readings… I was reading about the Learner Centered Environments and how “accomplished teachers give learners reason by respecting and understanding learners’ prior experiences and understandings, assuming that these can serve as a foundation on which to build bridges to new understandings.” For some reason, this reminded me of the quote, ‘They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.’ I suppose because it’s a reminder that if we do not keep in mind the learner and embrace what he or she brings to the class, they will never want to share what they have with the class. Imagine if each child can share one new thing they have learnt with the class of forty… it will be no time that each child would have learnt 39 other new things because we each have different experiences and perspectives. Powerful.

I am also going to ESSS the author’s not about how to teach algebra where students devise their own symbols to describe their own situations before teaching the class about the actual algebraic expressions… I bet the teachers in my school don’t teach algebra this way!

Another thing that I would like to introduce to my department is that of self-critique rubrics as part of formative assessments for the students. This will help them to provide feedback for themselves and their peers to learn more effectively. This would also help to develop the independent learners that are essential for the 21st century.