1. Feeling Okay 5. Have a Coach
2. Make it matter 6. Use it or Loose it
3. Own the information 7. Think back on it
4. Stretch the learner 8. Plan Next Steps
A couple of these really stick out to myself as a pre-service teacher.
Feeling okay, this is number one for a reason. If a student feels hungry, tired, worried, stressed, or distracted, powerful learning is not going to happen. What does ensuring students feel okay look like? I think it looks like a classroom community, which is often evident in the elementary years, but in my experience High school could use some help. In the High School years there is way more of a preoccupation with what other peers think; which leads to not asking question or not answering questions for fear of being wrong. As teachers we should be creating an environment where it is okay to be wrong and students are encouraged to take risks or face a fear.
Another that resinates with me: "use it or loose it." I see it in myself as a learner all the time. I learned how to integrate by parts (aka fancy integration for ugly functions) two years ago, wrote the final, and now if you asked me to Integrate a function by parts I would struggle because I have not used it since I wrote the final. I had a teacher in Jr. High that would include "Blast from the Past" on her exams to have us recall the skills we had learned in previous chapters. This helped immensely when it came time to write the end of year final because months and months hadn't gone by since the last time I used the material.
Powerful learning is starting students at the bottom and working up in accomplishable and celebrated steps. Challenging them to go one step further; yes you know the information now do something with it, create something with it. Having students process on the higher levels of Blooms taxonomy and connecting material to their own lives.
Through I only focused on two, all of these elements are critical for powerful learning. They all require us as educators to know and adapt to the contextual variables within the class, so that each student is experiencing powerful learning.