Learning to Learn (the best I can)

That’s the big idea/concept of our current unit. Learning to Learn.

Its kind of what Im doing now especially in a new school, new habitat meeting new creatures as I find my way around socially and professionally. So far, as I go through this unit together with my kids, there’s a lot to think about, reflect on. Yes learning is a life long process and not limited to a unit of study.

Some cool things that I can reflect on over the last month is getting to know the kids. Moving to a new school and city, it all goes back to the kids and relationships you develop with the kids. Together over the last month we’ve had ups and downs as we get to know and understand each other and the expectations for not only the learners but for me as well. These include creating an essential agreement together, hashing out our expectations for readers and writers workshops and our expectations about technology and how we use it. Its a collaborative process.

One big question that stuck with me right the start was how do we know what helps us learn and how can we use that to help us learn? We talked a lot about that. Obviously we all have different needs and wants and dreams.  Now coming from a small school to a large school, there are more needs and thus more challenges. But we broke it down to what basic needs are similar and  what basic needs are different. Then we discussed what needs we need to for learning, again similarities and differences. We then tried to map out ways we can be independent learners to put those needs into action. It was a mess at first. Just understanding the concept about learning, how we learn…took time (and is developing), and will continue to take time but finally came to an understanding and agreement. After creating our general class agreements we were able to dig deeper into our own personal learning. which then led to some goal setting (one goal not 10) and how we get there and more importantly what helps us get there. I set a goal with kids for myself as well.

So here we are, we have our agreements, our goals and some idea about what we need to help us learn. Now the action. So we are in the process of ‘restructuring’ the classroom habitat. Some need quite spaces, others need more time to finish. Other learners need me to be more visual when I give explanations while some asked for smaller group work to help them. Some said ‘leave me alone and let me have go by myself’.  So I thought that was pretty cool. I got to know how they need to learn and more importantly they got to know how they needed to learn. Is it perfect? Did this work all the time? Nope. Did we have some lessons together that were a ‘hot mess’ YEP. But thats part of learning to learn for the kids and for me.