Wednesday, March 02, 2016

Effective Learning

Perseverance
What does it take to be an effective learner?

Students grappled with this question today.

As we discussed it, I shared the famous adage, "If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but if you teach that man to fish, he'll eat for his whole life." We discussed the fact that the same is true for learning. If you know and use effective learning strategies, you're essentially creating a road map for yourself to anything you want to learn or anything you want to be.

Organization and Collaboration
and a sense of humor :)
Students identified a large number of wonderful effective learning elements which are listed on this chart. Then as they worked on their fraction exploration, I moved about the room recognizing how they were putting those attributes into action.

Focus
Using Boaler's advice in Mathematical Mindsets, next week students will have the chance to reflect on each attribute for homework by reading the attribute and then writing a sentence about how they currently apply that strategy or how they might apply it in the future. Boaler has a lot to say about homework and how it adds to inequity in the math class, and as part of this she suggests homework that's related to reflection. Though this assignment doesn't directly exemplify what she says, I think it's a good start--a start that will help to invigorate the growth mindsets and positive work habits during math class.