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Leib Lurie's avatar

This is, as always detailed and pithy. We too believe content connections are essential, and have created a library of discussion documents, designed for kids and parents to use at home. Especially over summer. Check out a few here… https://kidsreadnow.org/discovery-sheets/

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Jon Madian's avatar

Natalie,

I love the quality of thought in your writing; that's why I follow your work. I will suggest, however, that your premise in the last paragraph in your recent post is worth exploring. The idea that we must supply information that is memorized rather than nurturing situations in which information is discovered based on learner curiosity and/or facilitator enthusiasm is pivotal for how we think about teaching and learning.

When we focus on memorization we are quite challenged as to how we make learning engaging. Since schooling over emphasizes memorization, by validating this approach might we be misguiding educators steeped in this traditional approach? I fear so!

Children can reason based on life experiences, stories and poems and other engaging "media". Agreed, information is needed for reasoning to occur, but the current teacher, textbook, and worksheet strategies for communicating information are deadening. Don't you think we should shift our focus to discovery built on questions & concerns that originate in and therefore animate students?

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