Opportunities for Dynamic Learning

In her book, Shake Up Learning, Kasey Bell challenges her readers to, "Look at your curriculum and lesson plans, and make a list of five places where you see opportunities for dynamic learning."

I will be teaching in a new district and will be teaching 4 different classes that I haven't taught before, and I will be teaching US History in a different way. Instead of teaching all of US History in one year, I will be teaching Reconstruction to the current day in one school year. As a result of these changes, I don't have very specific answers here, but I will list some ideas.

Here are some places where I could move my students' learning from static to dynamic:

• All Classes: Each student will create a blog at the beginning of the year where they will reflect on the following throughout the course of the year:
• The effort they are putting into their projects, and the process by which they complete them
• Critical thinking or opinion questions that I pose during class
• How a particular lesson activity went - this will help give me feedback, which I need as much as my students
• How their learning connects to their personal lives
• Current events and how they are affected by the event
• Personal stories that answer questions such as, What inspires you? What is the most important thing that anyone has ever done for you? These questions could help build our classroom culture. Before doing this though, we'd have to make sure that students change the names of people they are talking about in order to retain confidentiality.
• Anything else we decide to write about!

• World History and US History: Instead of doing a handout about famous historical inventions, my students can do a Shark Tank project. We could connect the inventions to the modern day by asking local business owners who could actually be interested in buying the historical inventions to be our Sharks, which will make the experience more authentic. Students could present their inventions to them in order to persuade their audience of the importance of the invention.

• Sociology: I considered having my Sociology students create children's books that teach about digital citizenship. In addition to doing this, and to make the learning more dynamic, my students could mentor elementary students throughout the school year in order to teach them digital citizenship skills.

• Psychology: In Psychology class, students could conduct a case study throughout the year. As they learn new information, the way that they perceive their findings will change. We can reflect upon this process in their blogs.

• Economics: I think that my Economics class will provide many dynamic learning opportunities. It will be easy to find current events that we can connect to concepts in class, and students can reflect on the connections in their blogs. We could also have a classroom economy where students can earn "money" for completing classroom tasks. We can discuss supply, demand, scarcity, etc.and students will have personal experience to which they can attach their learning. Many students also have jobs, so we can discuss how the larger economy affects their job (minimum wage, unemployment, taxes, etc.).