Students Taking Charge: Inside the Learner Active Technology Infused Classroom by Nancy Sulla is a book that helps teachers to increase student ownership of learning. These are some teaching lessons that can be used in the classroom to better your teaching practice and keep students as owners of their own learning.
First, a felt need is important for intrinsic motivation and for students to take ownership of their learning. Teachers create a felt need through problem based tasks.
A felt need is defined as a need for students to learn the desired skill. This might seem unrealistic but if you look at it from an adult’s point of view, you’ll see the importance.
For example, teachers had to switch to remote learning during the pandemic and teachers had to learn new software and programs to teach their students remotely.
If remote learning was not an option, teachers would not have a felt need to learn new ways of teaching students. Teachers had to adapt and they adapted based on the need that they had to teach their students remotely by learning new software and programs. There was a felt need.
A felt need will motivate students in the same way to learn new skills and increase ownership of their learning.
Teachers can develop problem based tasks at the beginning of a unit for students to learn needed and desired skills.
Second, quantitative and qualitative leaps can be used for differentiation. This will benefit gifted or advanced learners.
In a quantitative leap, you are asking for students who have already mastered the skill, to produce more. For example, instead of three sources, you could ask for five sources. The student is asked to do more.
A qualitative leap of extended content: this means that the teacher will introduce content that may not be at that grade level.
Qualitative leap of higher cognitive level- requires students to think in more advanced ways. For example, this might include having students identify secondary and tertiary cause and effect relationships and then comparing and contrasting these effects.
Metacognitive leap- having students reflect on their own thinking processes. This will look like having students write about how they solved a problem.
Third, high academic achievement and instructional supports go hand in hand.
“Conversely, raising academic rigor absent instructional support will only result in more failure.” (Sulla 189)
Teachers need to teach at a high level and then provide supports for students to reach at a high level.
A practical solution that the author gives for this is for the teacher to ask him or herself “If students get stuck learning this skill or concept, what is posted on the wall that will help them?”
Fourth, use transfer tasks as a form of assessment to see if students have mastered the skills and concepts.
If students are able to transfers skills and concepts to a new and different problem then you will know as the teacher that they have mastered those skills and concepts. The transfer task should include application of student learning.
You’re assessing how well the student is able to transfer the knowledge they have learned. Transfer tasks should be completed in a short period of time.
Transfer tasks increase student ownership of learning because students are able to apply their new knowledge.
To sum up:
- A felt need is important for intrinsic motivation and for students to learn. Teachers create a felt need through problem based tasks.
- Quantitative and qualitative leaps can be used for differentiation and will benefit gifted and advanced learners.
- High academic achievement and instructional supports go hand in hand.
- Use transfer tasks as a form of assessment to see if students have mastered the skills and concepts.
You can check out the link to purchase the book here
Source: Students Taking Charge-Inside the Learner Active Technology Infused Classroom.