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Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you're having a wonderful day today. Today, we're going to go ahead and take a look at deeper learning in action. For today's lesson, I've chosen a quote by George Washington Carver, which states, "Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom."
By the end of the lesson today, you will be able to, first, review the core concepts of deeper learning and then to understand the National Research Council's suggestions for achieving deeper learning in curriculum and instruction. Finally, you will be able to develop those practical approaches to achieving deeper learning.
First, let's go ahead and review those core concepts for deeper learning. I want to remind you that deeper learning is really all about that rigorous core content, that students are looking at that core content first and then adapting it and applying it in innovative ways as they continue on in their learning.
The goal is to really develop those competencies that prepare students for their college and career readiness. So the core concepts or competencies within deeper learning are, first, to master the core academic content, then to really think critically and solve some of those complex problems, taking that core content and applying it a little more outside of the classroom.
To work collaboratively with the other students in the class as well as with professionals, to be able to communicate their thoughts and ideas effectively, whether they are offering up potential problems or solutions, to learn how to learn, getting students engaged with the learning that they're doing and tracking their own learning progress, and finally, to develop academic mindsets, encouraging students to really be thinking critically, but also understand the greater purposes for the work that they're doing within each class.
Now let's go ahead and take a look at the National Research Council's suggestions as ways to achieve deeper learning within your curriculum and your instruction. The first recommendation or suggestion that they have is to use multiple representations of those various concepts and tasks and the things that you include in class.
If you just show it to someone one way, that doesn't necessarily guarantee that they're going to have an accurate idea of what the information could look like outside of the classroom. So the goal is to present them with lots of different representations or angles on a particular concept.
The second suggestion is to really encourage deeper thinking. You want students to be elaborating on the ideas that they're bringing up as well as the ideas that you're presenting, to start questioning what's put in front of them. Don't just accept it because I'm the teacher, I'm telling it to you. Really grapple with some of these things. And finally, really encouraging them to explain back what they're learning in their own words so that they can feel that sense of mastery over the material.
The third suggestion is really to challenge learners. Engaging your students in tasks that are challenging to them really helps push the brain and can also totally up the engagement of your students.
The fourth suggestion is really to teach with examples. Using real-world examples, other students' examples, various case studies lends a certain authenticity to the work that you're presenting in the classroom and can really help, like we've said before, up the engagement of students and help get them thinking about the ways in which they can use this material later on.
This also really helps to encourage students' motivation, getting them totally into what it is that we're doing. This can be done a number of different ways through formative assessments, summative assessments, bringing in those outside examples and resources.
I also want to make sure that you understand that research that's been done about these practices shows that they're especially effective in schools that were engaged in those deeper learning approaches to instruction. So at different times, these different techniques that they have could support any one of those six deeper learning goals or competencies that we just talked about, depending on how you tend to focus in on them or what your approach is going to be.
Next, let's take a look at some of the practical approaches that you could use to really help achieve that deeper learning in your instruction. First, you're going to want to focus in on personalized learning. Personalization here really looks at the idea that the instruction is paced to the learners' needs. So you are making sure that you're tailoring what it is that you are presenting to the preferences and interests of the students you have.
Now this doesn't mean that you abandon all standards in order to go with the whim of each student. That's exactly the opposite. You're taking those standards, but you're making sure that you're making it relevant to the students that you have. So it could look a little different across multiple classes.
Also, you want to make sure that you remember that mastery is key. There is a total emphasis within personalized learning on the student being assessed on the work that they're doing and making sure that the teacher is the facilitator of that before they then move on.
Another practical approach would be work-based learning. So this is really looking at the application of the knowledge and the skills that each of the students in your class have acquired and then putting them into place with either a work study or an internship. This allows the students to really dive deeper into the real-world experiences with all of the material that you're presenting them. It also requires them to apply that content on their own, to work collaboratively with people in the community, and to really communicate their ideas effectively, putting everything into practice.
Another practical approach would be competency-based learning. So in competency-based education, or CBE, the outcomes are always tied to that real-world application of material. So students not only have the opportunity to pace themselves throughout the learning but then also move on once they've demonstrated that mastery and move deeper by applying it to situations outside of the classroom.
In fact, when we look at the idea of CBE, or competency-based education, CBE is actually one of the methods that can be used to really help achieve that deeper learning. So you'll notice that many of the design principles that go into competency based education actually apply to elements of deeper learning.
The last one that I want to talk about here is project-based learning. Project-based learning, like so many of these, really emphasis on the idea of applying what you've learned authentically in other situations. So it not only offers the opportunity for multidisciplinary learning, where you're focusing between two different classes-- so maybe English and history are working together, science and math, or any combination thereof-- but it also really focuses in on what we call inquiry, the idea that we're asking larger questions that don't necessarily have neat or tidy answers.
Both deeper learning as well as project-based learning really then focus in on applying what you've learned, all of those skills and the content information, to the outside, the real world, making them very compatible.
Now that we've reached the end of the lesson, you have been able to review the core concepts of deeper learning, understand the National Research Council's suggestions for achieving deeper learning in curriculum and instruction, and to develop practical approaches to achieving deeper learning.
Now that you think back on all that you've learned about deeper learning in action, what do you think would be the most difficult part of implementing some of these various means of deeper learning into your current curriculum?
Now it's your turn to apply what you've learned in this video. The additional resources section will be super helpful. This section is designed to help you discover useful ways to apply what you've learned here. Each link includes a brief description so that you can easily target the resources that you want.
(00:00-00:17) Intro
(00:18-00:38) Objectives
(00:39-01:56) Core Concepts of Deeper Learning
(01:57-04:29) National Research Core Council Suggestions
(04:30-07:45) Practical Approaches
(07:25-08:29) Review & Reflection