Gray Area Environmentalist™

Family. Environment. Community.

Teacher Institutes "Creating Powerful Learning Opportunities" with Ron Ritchhart

Ten ideas that struck my attention from Ron Ritchhart presentation were:

  1. The language that we use to develop what we do, language of teaching and how we need to modify it.

  2. We create opportunities for learning.

  3. Looking at something we don’t teach enables us to look at something with new eyes.

  4. Novel application: applying, organizing, interpreting, evaluating or synthesizing prior knowledge to solve novel problem or form new judgement.

  5. Meaningful inquiry: developing new understandings and insights that go beyond the obvious and extend one’s current understanding.

  6. Effective communication: expressing, representing, justifying, supporting, and communicating ones ideas, understandings, methods, and processes effectively using disciplinary tools, symbols, and language.

  7. Intrinsic value: having value and purpose beyond merely doing work for the teacher. At the high end, these efforts may have utilitarian, aesthetic, or personal value and connect learning to the larger world. (4-7= 4 key qualities of powerful learning opportunities)

  8. Zoom in game/ thinking routine: a simple structure to help support and scaffold your student’s thinking…looking closely, noticing, making interpretations based on evidence, raising questions, puzzles and wonders of zoomed in pictures, we are NOT playing “guess this picture”. This lead to: what is there to understand and appreciate about the image? What questions might the image provoke that can lead to further study? Where is the ambiguity, mystery, or intrigue in the image?

  9. Questions that teachers ask that help support powerful learning: review, procedural, generative(essential or authentic), constructive, and facilitative.

  10. What animates teachers? Making thinking visible. Because unless you know how children are thinking you have no idea what they understand, need to know how they put ideas together.

Teacher Institutes "Creating Powerful Learning Opportunities" with Ron Ritchhart

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