How has the Fluency 21 Project changed my teaching?
My Fluency21 Year 8 English Learning Units using the Planner App.
This term started with two days of professional learning with Lee Crockett from the Global Digital citizen Foundation.
Day one was exciting as Lee introduced Fluency21 to the whole school. Being part of the team piloting the 21 Century Fluencies I have used the online unit planner to develop two year 8 English units and from this learning process my teaching has changed from a traditional approach, as the teacher being the source of all learning, to a more challenged based approach using real world problems to engage and excite students.
In today’s presentation, Lee reinforced my belief that interest precedes learning and the importance of stimulating interest for students to learn and acquire new knowledge.
Year 8 English Information Fluency Learning Unit Video.
Lee shared a video of my year 8 Learning Unit, Making Your Opinion Public,
in which I demonstrate just-in-time-learning and teaching as active participation showing students talking about their ideas and comparing sources of information to determine fact from opinion.
To summarise the most important changes in my teaching have been:
- Using images to teach
- Moving to group collaboration
- Allowing students to be creative and to lead teaching
- Teaching students how to evaluate information they find on the Internet and work out what is fact or and what is opinion.
Lee is passionate about changing education and building skills that students need such as global citizenship, an awareness of how media forms opinions and how to effectively collaborate. This approach is making education more relevant to the real world.
I asked Lee about online tools for students to curate their research projects and to communicate effectively in global collaborations. He showed me two free tools: Trello and Slack…more possibilities to discover. I look forward to learning more tomorrow.
