MindShift | Ki Sung
The beginning of the school year is a time to set the tone for a student’s learning experience, including what teachers expect from students and families. But that first week of school is also the time to teach valuable learning skills that will be used throughout the year. Alan November, a former teacher turned lecturer, consultant and author, challenged teachers to rethink how they start the school year by outlining skills that are crucial to students to learn in the first five days of school. He shared his vision at the International Society for Technology in Educationconference in Philadelphia.
1. Learn How to Ask the Right Questions
Questions are at the heart of learning, but some questions create a narrow lens while others widen the field of inquiry. November displayed “A Questioning Toolkit” developed by Jamie McKenzie that explains the many types of questions. McKenzie uses the toolkit with students as young as kindergarten to help stretch young minds think beyond the ‘right’ answer in all their learning. Varieties of questions include probing, subsidiary, organizing, divergent, sorting, etc.
“I’m pretty confident that during the entire year, some kids might only ask the same questions over and over again,” November said. “They don’t have the repertoire of all these questions.”
2. Know How to Get Answers
Search engine results are determined by several factors, including user location and search history. But to dig deeper and find better answers, students need training on how to do advanced searches. This means becoming skilled at using search operators, understanding sources and thinking carefully about search terms. Everyone assumes they know how to use Google with confidence, but knowing how to search for specific information well takes practice. On the first day of school, November said he would teach students how to properly query documents, images, music, maps, etc.
“I have this sinking feeling that we’ve never taught them to design good queries in Google,” he said. “We didn’t build a rigorous creative curriculum in teaching children the algorithm and coding you need to understand how to use it and the creative imagination that kicks in to understand perspective from another place where you do not live.”
by MindMake via MindMake Blog
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