What if content isn’t the essential learning? What if content is just the vehicle to learn process?
Imagine these essential learnings:
Show your work:
I can describe and illustrate my thinking so that a reader understands without having to talking with me.
Mathematical flexibility:
I can apply mathematical flexibility to show what I know using more than one method.
Our 5th graders just started a unit on fractions. What if we use fractions to teach our young learners to show their work and demonstrate flexibility of thought?
Lesson tic-toc
- Introduce the two essential learnings.
- 60 second quick write to recall what is a fraction?
- 60 seconds of pair-share to improve answers to what is a fraction?
- Regularly return to the essentials to learn and the associated learning progressions. How are we doing? At what level are we right now? What is a next step?
- 60 second quick write to recall what are equivalent fractions?
- 60 seconds of pair-share to improve answers to what are equivalent fractions?
- How might we use technology for learning and investigation?
How might we put process and product on even ground? What if we emphasize communication and flexibility and use content and skill as vehicles to show what you know and how you can communicate?
Level 4
I can analyze different pathways to success, find connections, between pathways, and add new strategies to my thinking.
Level 3
I can apply mathematical flexibility to show what I know using more than one method.
Level 2
I can show my work to document one successful method.
Level 1
I can find and state a correct solution.
Level 4
I can show what I know using words, numbers, and pictures.
Level 3
I can describe and illustrate how I arrived at a solution so that a reader understands without having to talking with me.
Level 2
I can describe or illustrate how I arrived at a solution so that a reader understands without having to talking with me.
Level 1
I can find a correct solution to a task.
Experiments in Learning by Doing 