Active Learning
What is active learning?
Active learning is becoming an important fact to today's teaching. Active learning is when students are taking responsibility for their own learning. Active learning is walking away from the old traditional teaching style and making teaching more engaging. Teachers act more as facilitators and students take more accountability.
Why active learning?
I think that to fully be a successful teacher, you need to understand the group of students you teach. I, am a Generation Y student. Therefore, I can slightly relate to my students because they fall into Generation Z. These students are being introduced to technology at a very young age which makes them think they know everything. Students in today's century are attached to their phones as if the phone was part of who they are. As stated in the presentation, Understanding Today's Students, "It's as if messing with their phone is the same as messing with them." You will be surprised how students act when I have to take their phones away in class. It is shocking to see how protected they are over them. The problem to this technology tool is that is making students lose social skill and making them less experienced. Students are used to doing things on their own and are becoming more independent.
This brings me to the next point given in the presentation, Understanding Today's Students, "Gen Z kids don't need an adult to learn." We as adults have to adjust to these new ways of teaching. As stated in Jennifer Gonzales's podcast "To learn, students need to DO something." Today's students can't sit still and hear a 45-minute lesson. They will get bored and not learn a thing. This is where teachers need to implement active learning. Gen Z students need to feel that they are in charge of their own learning to be engaged.
How to create an activate learning?
Many teachers have used the teaching method of I do, We do, You do. However, I had made the mistake of creating the whole lesson using worksheets rather than changing it up to an active learning lesson. I have learned that when I create active and engaging lessons, the students are involved, motivated, willing to work, and they are learning from one another. Another important factor I have noticed is that the content must be reliable to their own personal lives.
There are many ways to create active learning lessons. Pair and Share is a great lesson to get the students talking in person. Which I think is very important in today's century. Creating videos to explain their answers are also a great tool for active learning. Students love being on their phones and taking pictures. Creating lessons that they can use their phones is always a win!
Active Learning Lesson
For this particular subject, I chose to talk about QR codes in my padlet. As stated in the Prezi, Decoding QR Codes by Nicole Zumpano, QR codes are everywhere! In this lesson, QR Codes Mysteries, a 4th-grade class learns about famous quotes using QR codes. The students can use their iPad to scan the codes and find the missing words to the famous quotes. What I liked about this activity is the fact that the teacher taught them how to create their own QR codes. The teacher not only showed them, but also made them DO it themselves!
I have personally done this active activity before and it has worked amazing. I used this activity as a review. I usually do a scanger hunt to review what we have learned during the week. I usually have the problems posted in different parts of the room but this time I actually had the QR codes posted all over the room. What I really liked about this is the fact that students can't actually see the problems until they scan the codes. Which makes them physically get up and interact with others.
After students have scanned the codes the problems show up on their phones and they can go ahead solve them and look for the answer around the room. The answers are located in the corner of each QR code. What I love about this active learning activity is that I can walk around and I act as an facilitator. The students get to interact with me and their peers.
Something I can do differently is that I should definitely try to implement students to create their own QR codes to show me their answers!
I love how you included your own QR code to your blog post! That was such a great idea. I also read through the QR code mysteries for my active learning post and I thought it was such a fun lesson. It's great that you used this lesson idea in your classroom. I think the getting up and interacting with others is a really important part of active learning. My preschoolers aren't old enough to truly understand what a QR code is so I can't really use the idea in my classroom, but if I ever teach anything else I would definitely use this lesson idea!
ReplyDeleteIt's great to hear that you have experience with using QR codes with your students. You are correct in that when teachers take the time to put thought into their lessons and make them meaningful to students there is higher engagement. Great suggestion in your Padlet to have students pair with other classes to solve QR code mysteries, too.
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