January 24, 2010

I'll talk here about Cambourne's Conditions of Learning. I appreciate seeing these conditions modeled frequently in my main placement. My supervising teacher creates the environmental conditions essential to literacy learning.

With regard to language immersion, students in our class are accustomed to the routine of discussion, whether it is via individual response, small groups, or whole group discussion. They are also constantly exposed to written text as my teacher successfully incorporates an interdisciplinary approach to her teaching. Students are often asked to respond to teaching with quick writes and/or journal entries. This ties into how the teacher demonstrates her assignment and her expectations. I have to mention that here is where a teacher's love of learning shines powerfully. Students will recognize a teacher's enthusiasm for learning. If they respect that teacher, students gain confidence as they try out what the teacher asks of them. A really good teacher will also empower his/her students with managing the choices they need to make to be successful in their learning.

Practice, practice, practice...students should be given lots of opportunities to use what they learn--and across the curriculum. And it's the teacher's responsibility to provide a safe environment in her classroom to allow students to try things out, make mistakes. In my 6th grade class, the teacher has taught the students the value of sharing their mistakes. During math, after a mini-lesson, and after small group work sessions of math problems, students are asked to share their findings on the Active Board. She praises not only the correct answers--but also demonstrations by students of how they made errors in their work. Chances are someone else made the same error; everyone learns from this sharing.

Finally, students of all ages (even us "older" ones!) appreciate feedback. Sometimes we are asked to reflect upon ourselves or our classmates. Sometimes the teacher evaluates our understandings. Whatever form it takes--it gives us constant affirmation of our accomplishments. An example from my placement classroom: Buzz Time. Kids form small groups of 2-4 students each. They share what independent reading they have done for the week by way of responding to a prompt. Examples: "I was most surprised when..." or "I can relate most to the character of..." They report on a classmate's response. This way, students are sharing in each other's self-reflections of reading. Fun--and very engaging!