LA - The Student-Led Navigational Lesson

Hi all,

First of all, let me direct your attention to this article written by emergingedtech.com - click here to access it.

In summary:



However, there's one use that wasn't explored during this research... "Using blogging to create a Student-Led Navigational Lesson".

This is a concept I started developing last year with my GCSE cohort - in principle, it proposes the idea that "students undertake the learning at their own pace as you give them access to all of the information they need in order to achieve the lesson objectives - almost like an online course".  

This of course, suggested that the most important part of the lesson is the "Be Able To" where students undertook a task to evidence that learning did in fact take place.

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I must admit, it took a little while for students to get used to this way of delivering content but some of the results were:

- Students became more independent and proactive in terms of filling in gaps in their knowledge.

- Students became more interested and engaged in the content of the lesson because they learnt it at their own pace.

- Students became more accountable for their own learning.

- Students became more resourceful and empowered in terms of establishing how they learnt best.

- Lessons became more task-driven as these were designed to enable students to scaffold their learning throughout the lesson... my script became: "don't do activity 3 without having undertaken activity 2... It's not a race, it's about making sure you leave the lesson having learnt/achieved the learning objectives".

BUT the most challenging element for me was that I had to adjust my teaching practice to suit the lesson dynamics.  My lessons became more about showing students how to navigate the "Class Blog", how to "Navigate the Lesson of the Day", and ensuring that expectations were adhered to throughout the lesson. 

This, in turn, allowed me to attend to all students in the class individually, giving verbal feedback on how their learning journey was taking place, often giving them a question to extend their learning.

THE FEEDBACK RECORD: Students wrote a short summary of the verbal feedback (our conversation) in their blog notes.