Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Unusual Time for Teaching

In It’s okay to throw stuff out. Now’s a good time to rethink a lot of what we’re doing.

History Tech, glennw shares,

“Simply put, what we’ve always done in the past probably isn’t going to work today.”

With the unusual start of school where some people are going in person and others are virtual or part time virtual, it is time to do some unusual teaching.

We can’t go back to the “old way” of teaching. Gone are the lectures and the push information type learning.

Now is a good time to try all the new things you wanted to but was afraid to get away from the traditional way of teaching.

Now more than ever would be the perfect time for Project Based Learning. Within Project Based Learning, you can implement Universal Design for Learning.

If you are an elementary school teacher and you teach a variety of subjects, creating a project that would incorporate all of the subjects will make learning more fun and teaching easier. Students will be more engaged when they are going back and forth from virtual to face to face instruction. This project will be the constant that can tie all of the learning together. The teacher may have to do more work on the front end of the project but during the project, the teacher becomes more of the facilitator and helps to guide the learning. Teachers of the same grade levels can meet to share ideas and./or collaborate on projects.

In upper grades, teams of teachers can get together to create the project together and incorporate their different areas of study into the assignments. With a team, it will be easier to bounce off ideas and share the workload. The final assessment can include a finished project or presentation that incorporates all areas of study.

By doing a project that is relevant to the students, they will be more engaged and excited about learning. All of the negativity and the fear factor from the media has to weigh heavily on the teachers and the students. Something like a project can pull everyone together and help them less focused on the media.

How do you feel about Project Based Learning? Please share.

Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash

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