Effort Based Learning
POSTED AT 03:19 PM

rocky

Wow--It has been a long time since I posted here! I haven't stopped blogging--oh no, not at all! I've been blogging on my other blogs: blahblahblog and BlogHeads. But, I haven't posted here because I've been so very busy.

I just finished working on a grant writing team. We wrote a school reform design grant. I'm really excited about it because the basis of the grant is focused on turning our school around from "Aptitute Based Learning" to "Effort Based Learning."

Effort Based Learning, as called the Incremental Learning Theory, basically posits that instead of basing our teaching on student aptitude--some students have more aptitude/ability to learn than others/bell curve--we should focus our teaching on helping students learn based on the right types of effort--meaning teaching challenging Standards based tasks coupled with metacognitive skills within a structured, highly scaffolded progression of skills and concepts with multiple opportunities for practice and revision.

Now, what does all this mean? This means that we will be learning many new scaffolding strategies, so that both teachers and students articulate and understand the standards, how to apply the criteria, and how to know when to use which strategies (metacognition and self regulated learning.)

Read this wonderful article: Principles of Learning for Effort-Based Education by Lauren Resnick. I will be posting here more often, using this blog as a place to unfold the understanding and implementation of Effort Based Learning at our school. I welcome any comments, ideas, suggestions.

Mine's in Europe!
POSTED AT 09:55 PM

rocky

Yep, she made it. She's in Europe!!! And she's blogging her trip, complete with pictures!!! Check it out at Learning Is Fun