The Wooster Teacher Learner Blog
How We Make Our Learning, and Our Teaching, Visible in Our Learning Environments
Teachers enhance how learning becomes a visible activity in the classroom- the visibility helps develop students' capacities as well as their individual and group identities as learners.
Visible classrooms can be identified by five key principles—that learning is:
- Purposeful
- Social
- Representational
- Empowering
- Emotional.
Let's celebrate what learning we are seeing displayed in our Wooster learning environments this week:
Purposeful
Parvin Taraz uses one of her bulletin boards to visually display a timeline of the curriculum in her classes. These timelines offer context around daily learning intentions and they represent: “This is where we were. This is where we are. This is where we are going!” At the end of a unit, one student uses a dry erase marker to check off an item from the list. Students feel empowered when they see that the class is progressing forward.
In John Zahner’s 4th grade learning environment, the anchor chart is purposefully made visible as the students add to their writing journals on informative writing. This is a go-to visual for students as they engage with this style of writing.
Social
In Heidi Ryan's English 6 and 7, she embraces the social aspect of learning by asking her students to "tweet" their latest independent reading book to their classmates, while also taking a snapshot selfie of themselves with their new favorite read.
Representational
In 3rd grade, Ted Krupman uses anchor charts to visually display student thinking and to create a frame for his daily mini lessons. Here, Ted solicits feedback and contributions from his students
Emotional
In 2nd grade, Caitlin Bellagamba displays a growth mindset board as a talking point with her students when they get "stuck" in a fixed mindset.
~Elizabeth Higgins, Wooster School Director of Teaching and Learning and Parvin Taraz, Wooster School Assistant Director of Teaching and Learning, and Upper and Middle School Math Teacher
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