Strategies for Developing Independent Learners

If one were to Google "Developing Independent Learners", 2,450,000 results appear today, with the potential for even more in the future. Obviously this is an important topic in education and a goal of many schools. Since I teach computer classes, where the possible scenarios of what can happen on a computer are endless, I have found a couple of main areas that help my students become independent learners. One of our first grade teachers implements two of these strategies in his classroom and they are by far my most independent learners.


The first strategy is when a student asks a question, to respond back with "What have you already tried?" This strategy requires the student to problem solve as you are no longer going to quickly give them an answer. The second strategy is asking the students "Where can you find that answer?" By putting the responsibility back on them to find the answer, you have removed the cycle of the student always relying on the teacher for their learning. However, as a teacher, you need to make sure you have provided the students with the resources needed to find the answer. Possibilities include books, posters on the wall, directions on a piece of paper or the computer and other students. While I don't like to encourage too much reliance on other students as this shifts the responsibility off the student, it has been a proven resource. Diligent monitoring of the student's habits and timely intervention helps curb too much reliance on others. 

As a teacher, I also need to have routines in place so that students know what to do in certain situations (when they are done, when they are waiting for me) so that they stay focused on what they are doing.These strategies work in any grade. In my 8th grade class, the students don't like it, but I always ask them if they have read the directions when they ask me how to do something. If they have and are still confused, I follow up with "What have you tried so far?" and they we walk through it together. When they are done, I ask them what they should do and redirect them if needed. There are many other well-thought strategies to developing independent learners, but these are some of my go-tos.

Observation Checklist

I spend a lot of my classtime walking around the room helping and observing students, a great way to do formative assessment in the moment. In the past, I used a checklist to keep track of different things, like who has finished what and were the students on task. During my Assessment and Differentiation class, I decided that my project would be to improve this form so that it could be used during project based learning activities to assess many different areas.

My internet search provided me with a lot of individual checklists; and while they listed excellent skills to assess, I wanted a whole-class form. In the end, I am back to the same format I used to use, however I now have a more specific purpose for the form. Each day I will decide what I want to assess such as specific content skills, on-task behavior, who finishes when (for differentiation purposes), who works independently without a lot of support, who answers others questions, and who asks a lot of questions. My main means of documentation will be a 1,2,3 rating system, though I could also use codes to help me distinguish if the off-task behavior was for talking (T), or paying too much attention to others (B), or maybe they didn't understand what to do (U). For the 1.2,3 rating system, 1 is the learning stage, 2 is the practicing stage and 3 is automatic stage. In the short class periods I have, I was given the advice to mark the 1's and 3's first, and everyone else is a 2.

21st Century skills can more easily be assessed if I list them on my checklist. Ultimately, as I learn more specifics about my classes, I can provide for differentiated assignments based on what data I am collecting with this checklist. Even though I am a specials teacher and see 20 classes a week, this checklist can easily be adapted for use in the classroom to assess all the skills mentioned above, plus many more. If you would like to try this checklist, you may download it here.

Engaged Learning & 21st Century Skills

For me, the 21st Century Skills of Creativity, Collaboration, Critical Thinking and Communication go hand in hand with engaged learning. I am lucky enough to be a part of our school's project based learning team, a team of very dedicated teachers who are working together to provide meaningful, engaged learning experiences for our students. We presented a video of our journey this year to our school board last night, which you can view below.





As you can see, engaged learning and the 4 C's go hand in hand, and often overlap. No where in the video did you see students sitting in rows, listening to a lecture or completing a worksheet. One of my goals for next year is to continue to structure lessons that do not center around whole group lecture, and model this for other teachers. I plan to accomplish this through better lesson design, small group instruction, providing a variety of resources such as what Kathie Nunley does in her classroom, and finally, by referencing the list I started on what to do instead of a worksheet or lecture. I would love it if you could add your thoughts to this list as well!

Pair Share

I am always tring to find ways to engage most if not all of my students during the short "teaching time" I begin all my classes with. One suggestion from my principal was to try "Pair Share". I prefer to let the students tell me what they already know about what we are doing, especially since we meet only once a week and need to start with a review of what we learned last week. When I ask them, I usually get a few hands up and often the same ones. With pair share, the students turn to their designated partner (we have established this beforehand) and discuss whatever it is I ask.

After they discuss together, I then ask the entire class the question. Below you can see the response I now get! By having all students participate in a discussion with another student, they are all engaged and they also feel more confident in raising their hand to answer my question.

First Grade's New Netbooks

Last week we finally finished imaging the new first grade netbooks, putting them in a cart and giving the first grade teachers a quick demo of them. So the question is: What would you do with a netbook for each of your students? Every time I walked by one first grade teacher's room, he had come up with really authentic, engaging activities for his students to do with the new netbooks. Afterward, I asked him how we can get the rest of our teachers to do these kind of activities. His first answer was to share with them what he has done and how. So I am now sharing these ideas!


The very first activity the students worked on was to do their daily journal entry in Word. This was an activity they were completely comfortable doing independently (having done journaling every day in their class and having used Word in computer class a few times.) This allowed the teacher to help them with the logistics of using the new netbooks. When I walked in, every student was deeply engrossed in their writing.


The second activity spawned off the first and they wrote letters to the superintendent thanking him for the new netbooks. They have done letter writing before, so after a quick review they were off working. What an authentic task that involved language arts and communication skills!


Branching into more authentic communication skills, another activity was to send emails to their classmates, teacher and parents. Letter writing skills were reinforced again and when I came in the room, they were so eager to show me what they were doing! We had a few problems with correcting some inaccurate email addresses and navigating some message boxes that popped up, but they were thrilled to be doing this activity! They learned how to respond to their classmates emails and they also received responses from their parents. What positive reinforcement! Think of all the language arts and communication skills they were developing during this. Yes, they used kid spelling but that in no way inhibited their ability to communicate with each other through a written medium.


An activity I didn't get to see was when the teacher had them use Smart Notebook software (again something they were familiar with using) to create math review worksheets. They were given the choice of topics and the worksheets were completed by classmates. Math curriculum and creativity were definitely reinforced!


This particular first grade teacher is pretty technologically savvy, but he is also willing to take risks. He had no idea how it would work sending out emails, but he was willing to try. He is also very supportive of student choice and allowing for movement in his classroom (as the students help each other and show off their work to each other.) Not all teachers are willing to take such risks, but as he said, once an activity is successfully accomplished, share the experience!

Developing Independent Learners

Lately I have been giving a lot of thought to the instructional strategies I use in my classroom. As a technology teacher for grades K-3, I see each class once a week for 45 minutes. After providing the day’s instructions and starting our work time, my students love asking me and their neighbor how to do something. Are my instructions that unclear or do they crave individual instruction?It is probably a combination of both; however, I feel that many students are looking for someone to give them the answer instead of being independent learners. So how do I get them from their preferred method of individual instruction to becoming independent learners who seek out their resources and use them wisely to accomplish the task at hand? 

Last year I taught middle school students and by second semester I had found ways to direct them to become independent learners. Of course all of them were fairly proficient readers and could navigate Moodle really well, but that doesn’t mean I can’t provide similar situations for my younger students; so this week I started something new. Thinking about the directions I had posted on the board last week (fifteen baby steps to find an internet picture, save it and insert it in your work), I instead created a screen-cast video which I posted on my website. The third graders were shown where the video was, how to start and stop it between steps, and on the board I wrote only four directions (the last of which was to “raise your hand when finished”.) As we worked through class, I often redirected them back to the video, even back to specific parts if they were repeating a mistake. Without me answering one question, in the span of a half hour, half the class had finished the assignment. Quite a few of them spent more time than I anticipated writing the three sentences I asked for, and those that didn’t finish will do so next week. How do I measure success? My goal was to reinforce what we did last week by having them do it again on their own. There was definitely a learning curve in learning how to navigate between software programs, but I feel my goal was accomplished because they were successful at inserting pictures without asking me or their neighbor for the directions.

In my view, this is individual instruction and independent learning. Did it meet every student’s learning style? Probably not, I still have work to do on that one. One thing that is clear to me is I need to provide more resources for them to access on their own to find the answer and encourage them to do so. There is one teacher in our school who does a very good job at reminding his students to look for a place where they could find the answer to their question. I admire his style and in the day-to-day flow of my class I need to remember his advice to his students. This is one small step in the right direction to helping my students become independent learners.

As a post-script to this post I also have to think about my lessons and whether or not every student in the class needed to learn how to do this. The students who were able to watch the video and complete the activity were at the right level at the right time to do this - it met their needs. The students who didn't finish ranged from those who were almost there, they just needed a little more time, to those who were really struggling and therefore this activity was beyond their needs. I think that during the next class I will offer to let those that didn't finish decide if they want to learn how to finish. If not, they can stop and join the rest of the class in the next activity.

Vision of Tech Use in the Classroom

Thanks to some great people that I am following on Twitter, I have learned many new ways to use technology in the classroom over the last two months, so much in fact, that I am overwhelmed. As I try to sort through all this great information and prepare myself to help the teachers at my school use more technology, I have been trying to find a way to organize my thoughts. I have made a few attempts at this and have re-written this blog a couple of times (and could keep revising it, but here it is!)

The thought finally came to me that I need to go back to what I learned on the first day of my Philosophy of Education class: when planning a lesson, keep in mind content, process and product. Once I started looking at organizing all the uses for technology according to this principal, things started to fall in place. Below I will attempt to explain my vision.

Authenticity: As I wrote in a previous blog , I strongly believe that we need to use technology in the classroom in an authentic manner, the same way you would use it in your life. If you need to contact someone for information, you use email, Twitter, Facebook, cellphones etc. If you want to research information you look for reliable web sites, videos, books, wikis and blogs (which give you great ideas!). If you want to present information to someone you keep your audience in mind and create a blog post, web site, slide show or video. How we pick which one to use is based on personal preference and our audience. Students should be able to do the same. Having every student work on Photo Story at the same time just to say you used technology is missing the goal of authenticity and will eventually bore students. Authenticity also helps differentiate. 

Content: What information will the student learn? With the explosion of resources on the internet, even when students research the same topic, they will find different information. Once they begin their research, different aspects of the topic will appeal to them and they may go off in different directions. Using technology to obtain content can be done by using different search engines, finding primary sources online, watching videos, or using social networking to contact experts.

Process: How will students learn the information? In addition to the above mentioned research, students will need to organize their information with graphic organizers, timelines, online notes and binders, and bookmark tags. They can use interactives to practice skills; they can share information and ideas and comment on them with each other; and they can listen to books and podcasts online. Backchanneling and blogging can be used to have real time discussions, while Skype and wikis can help connect us to other classrooms around the world. 

Product: How will students use the information? When they have all their information students can create many different products to showcase/present this information including blogs, posters, cartoons, timelines, videos, animations, digital stories, graphs, books and podcasts. What they use depends on student choice and their target audience; then they can share their product with the world.

Finally, don’t forget higher order thinking skills. Are you using technology primary on the lower end of Blooms? Or are you offering opportunities to use it more often on the higher end for comparing, evaluating, creating? As you may have noticed, many technologies can be used in multiple places. My goal is to help teachers be aware of when they can use technology, decide which one is the best fit and support them in using it. This is an ongoing, ever-changing process that we are involved in, and hopefully this post helps you organize your own uses for technology.

Success versus Failure in the Classroom

"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose." - Bill Gates.

We learn so much by our failures. It is through trial and error that we come up with the creative solutions. Yet as a teacher, how do we make students comfortable with failure? (Not necessarily the "F" grade, but the mistakes we make along the way.) When I walk around the classroom offering comments on student's work, they usually trend toward the positive, probably because when I offer suggestions for improvement or change, sometimes the students get defensive. When I look at times when others have given me suggestions for improvement or change, I felt defensive also! How can we change this?

At the end of each class, I ask the students to share what problems they encountered and how they overcame them. I always praise their ability to do so. I sometimes do this when I conference with them. Although when I conference with them I am usually asking them to rate their work. They are pretty honest in doing this and sometimes I tell them they did better than they think.

Would requiring revisions take the sting out of "not doing something right"? So often we grade only once and that grade is what they end up with. Is that the cause of their fear of failure? Or is it ridicule by their classmates when they don't know an answer or when they make a mistake? I know my middle school students love to laugh/share the "Fail" pictures/websites, does that contribute to the climate of being afraid to fail?

I don't really have the answer here. As the leader in the classroom, I definitely need to lead by example though. How should I encourage success through mistakes?

Teaching for Tomorrow: Incorporating Technology and Student Choice

I have just finished reading an excellent book, Teaching for Tomorrow by Ted McCain. His thoughts on introducing problem based learning into the classroom resonate strongly with me, as I have discussed in my prior blog post where I proposed that problem based learning should be combined with project based learning. To truly prepare students for their future, we need to provide them with problem-solving skills which will help them be successful in life as well as in their careers. As Ted McCain states frequently throughout the book, we are graduating students to be "highly educated, useless people."

Over the course of the last year, I have unknowingly applied some of what Mr. McCain is talking about into my own classroom. Maybe it is because I am a business teacher, or maybe it is because of my ten years experience in the corporate world, but I like to provide authentic situations for my students. Though I did not incorporate as many situations as I would have liked, it did provide some problem-solving situations. Did my students successfully completely them entirely on their own? No. Did they struggle with parts of them? Yes. Was it therefore worthwhile? Definitely.

There are two main points I am left thinking about after reading this book. The first is incorporating technology. There is a big push in schools to incorporate Web 2.0 applications into our classrooms for purposes of engagement, meeting different learning styles and to replicate life outside of school. However, I am of the feeling that technology should be used when technology should be used! We should not be using it artificially just to say we are using technology. For example, if a student needs to ask a question of a professional, they should be able to use email. When they want to create a presentation, they should be able to choose from a variety of software and Web 2.0 applications to do so. I believe in making them aware of what is available, but then letting them choose which technology they want to use (I have them justify their choice - another learning opportunity). When we move towards project based learning, we need to be able to have the technological resources needed for the students to work on their project authentically. Through Twitter and a list-serve I am a part of, I have been finding many great web sites from free CAD design, to free web design, to many slide show/poster/multimedia applications. Instead of instructing our students to use certain ones at certain times, we need to be able to help them find the ones they need when they need them, show them the ones we already know about and of course let them find their own!

Mr. McCain has many good examples of problem-based learning in his book; however, they all seem to be teacher led. The teacher has created the problem and requirements, and all the students work on this same problem. The one benefit to this is how he creates problems with certain requirements that mirror the business world. How can we incorporate student choice, which is a large part of project-based learning, yet still get the authentic experiences of the business world? Or do we need to worry about this? Is it enough that the students are solving problems in their project, so they have an idea of how to approach a problem, which would carry over into future situations, whether they are personal (repairing something you own) or career related (working on something for a client.) I don't have the answer to this, but am inclined to agree with the latter view that solving any type of problem helps you approach future problems.