Curriculum & Unit Design

5 Ways to Promote Student Agency

In my school district we adopted the five learning beliefs from Education Reimagined to help drive our district vision: competency-based; personalized, relevant & contextualized; learner agency; socially embedded; open-walled.

In working with these five beliefs, we must (1) have a clear understanding of what they mean, and (2) be equipped with explicit strategies to make them a reality. Otherwise, a vision is not much more than words on paper.

That being said, here’s the Education Reimagined definition of learner agency:

Learning that is characterized by learning agency recognizes learners as active participants in their own learning and engages them in the design of their experiences and the realization of their learning outcomes in ways appropriate for their developmental level. As such, learners have choice and voice in their educational experiences as they progress through competencies. Harnessing his or her own intrinsic motivation to learn, each learner strives to ultimately take full ownership of his or her own learning.

And, reflecting upon my work with inquiry-based learning and project based learning, here are five ways to promote student agency.

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Here’s a Can’t Miss #GeniusHour Opportunity…

By Ross Cooper Leave a Comment

Here’s a can’t miss #GeniusHour opportunity…

My good friend A.J. Juliani (@ajjuliani) – who is widely considered the go-to educator for Genius Hour – recently launched this course, which literally contains everything you’ll need to implement Genius Hour with your students! (And, if you contact me directly – or if you’re on my mailing list – I’ll send you a coupon code for 20% off the course price.)

Click here to see what Genius Hour is all about. Click here to read what Genius Hour is all about. And, see below to learn about what’s included in the course.

Here’s what you’ll get…

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Pokémon Go, One Quick Thought…

By Ross Cooper 10 Comments

The other day, when I was talking to one of my educator friends, I voiced something to the effect of, “If I were still in the classroom, I’d find a way to fit Pokémon Go into my teaching!” In my opinion, this app is the perfect example of when it’s appropriate to begin planning instruction with the technology in mind and not what we want students to understand or be able to do (because the app is so cool, we just have to use it).

Nonetheless, when utilizing the app (or any other technology), we should probably rethink our actions if in no way, shape, or form are we then able to connect/integrate the technology with what students are supposed to learn…or, if technology use results in the same understandings being reached, but in a much less efficient or more roundabout way. In other words, we shouldn’t try to cram a square peg into a round hole.

Now, let’s take a closer look at why (or, why not) Pokémon Go has a place in our classrooms.

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Stop Posting Essential Questions for Every Lesson

By Ross Cooper Leave a Comment

Essential Questions, by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, p. 15

My Thoughts on the Excerpt

1. Learning Targets for Lessons, Essential Questions for Units

If students are able to thoroughly investigate an essential question within a given class period, the odds are it’s not an essential question. As stated, it could instead possibly be a leading question or guiding question…On the other hand, students can benefit from a learning target being posted for every lesson.

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3 Reasons to Rethink Your Basal Reader

By Ross Cooper 4 Comments

Currently in my district at the elementary level, we are in the process of strategically moving away from our basal reading program. We’ve already “cut out” its writing component, as next year we’ll be hitting the ground running with Writing Workshop and the Units of Study. Also, we’ve begun the process of designing our own reading comprehension instruction with the assistance of Reading with Meaning, Strategies That Work, and Notice & Note (both fiction and non-fiction).

Now, while it may be “cool” and trendy to hate on textbooks, for the benefit of all parties involved – students, parents, teachers, administrators, etc. – I believe it’s important to be able to articulate why we are choosing to deemphasize the program.

With these thoughts in mind, here are three reasons to rethink your basal reader.

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Project-Based Learning Professional Development (part 3): The Workshop Model

By Ross Cooper 1 Comment

This post is the final of three installments that describe the three project-based learning (PBL) professional development sessions I facilitated for our Innovate Salisbury team, a team of 15 teachers engaging with building leaders, district leaders, and other experts/thought leaders to help shape the vision for teaching and learning in our classrooms…To read more about Innovate Salisbury, take a look at this Edutopia article I collaborated on with my Superintendent, Randy Ziegenfuss (@ziegeran), and Assistant Superintendent, Lynn Fuini-Hetten (@lfuinihetten).

The first PBL session was more of a general overview of PBL. The second session contained a module in which teachers, playing the role of students, designed student-created rubrics for a PBL unit on opinions and arguments.

The Third Session

The third session followed a workshop model in which teachers spent the majority of the time working on this template, which was adapted from the Buck Institute for Education. (Just in case, here’s a PDF version.) While the work was taking place, teachers were able to rely on each other and/or administrators for support.

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Should practitioners ignore researchers?

By Ross Cooper 4 Comments

Since the start of my career in 2007, I have witnessed some form of educational debate take place on almost a daily basis. And, with the rise of social media – in particular, Facebook and Twitter – these types of conversations are now that much easier to create, engage in, and/or find.

The Problem

Overall, the majority of this communication does ultimately benefit our students, but at the same time I believe we owe it to our profession to not just interact when we’re “in the know,” but also when there is a lot to be learned…And, furthermore, we should be willing to admit to ourselves and others that we just might not know everything.

Over the past month I have witnessed a few arguments unfold on Twitter in which a couple of educators from other districts were justifying their actions by declaring, “Those ideas [proposed by others in the district] wouldn’t work with my students,” and at the same time they discounted the work of highly respected researchers because “They aren’t in the classroom!” In general, these situations were your typical resistance to change.

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If It’s Not Medium Agnostic, It’s Not Project-Based Learning

By Ross Cooper 3 Comments

In the last post we explored explicit steps for the designing of student-created rubrics, and we touched upon the significance of rubrics/project-based learning (PBL) experiences being medium agnostic. In this particular context, this term can be defined as…

Learning that is driven by enduring understandings (not tasks), and therefore students can demonstrate their knowledge however they choose.

Now, let’s look at how we can promote medium agnostic learning experiences in our classrooms…

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Project-Based Learning Professional Development (part 2): Student-Created Rubrics

By Ross Cooper 3 Comments

In a previous post I described the first of three project-based learning (PBL) professional development sessions I facilitated for our Innovate Salisbury team, a team of 15 teachers engaging with building leaders, district leaders, and other experts/thought leaders to help shape the vision for teaching and learning in our classrooms.

While the first session was more of a general overview of PBL, this past Wednesday we focused on student-created rubrics.

Here is a look at what took place:

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Inquiry is King. Here’s Why…

By Ross Cooper 3 Comments

What is Inquiry?

Inquiry-based learning can be defined as learning that “starts by posing questions, problems or scenarios – rather than simply presenting established facts or portraying a smooth path to knowledge. The process is often assisted by a facilitator.”

In short, through some form of productive struggle, students “uncover” material, as opposed to content coverage and the memorization/regurgitation of facts and knowledge…For a look at what this uncovering looks like and why it is so crucial, refer to a previous post, “Why I Refused to Flip My Classroom.” In fact, I highly encourage you to take a few short minutes to read the post and then return to this one.

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