A Story on Mastery Learning...
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"Once upon a time, I was terrified that I wouldn’t pass my drivers test. I wasn’t good at parallel parking to begin with, but as I waited for my instructor to pick me up I realized that I had been practicing on the wrong side of the road. I had been approaching the parking spot from the north when I should have been approaching it from the south. To be successful, I would have to mirror everything I’d trained myself to do and would only have two shots to get it right. Outlook not so good.
In these instances, one common thought helped me with the stress. “If I don’t do well, I can always take it again. It’s not the end of the world.” It’s funny how that works. Drivers test, SATs, ACTs, Praxis, Bar exam, GREs, Civil Service test, the list of tests that you can retake until you are happy with your score is long. The one place you can’t retake things until you’re happy with your grade? School. How much sense does that make? The place where you are supposed to learn the information and skills that are going to make you a productive member of society punishes you for not getting something right the first time fast enough. If you don’t understand something the first time, you are left behind, clueless, because the class has to move on whether you are ready or not. Time compounds this problem, especially in Math and Science, because how can you understand the next lesson when it builds on the first lesson you didn’t understand? I believe my struggling students, especially the ones who have shut down or act out, do so because they have fallen so far behind it becomes impossible in their mind to catch up, so they give up. You never learn, you fail the test. You never learn, you fail the test. You never learn, you fail the test. You give up. I’m sick of it. Especially because this goes against everything we know about learning. We know doing reps, repeating the same action over and over again, create neural pathways in the brain which allow you to do things better and faster the more you practice. Meaning, failure is a big part of learning and if you want to, given enough time, you can learn anything. I wanted to create a classroom where anyone who wanted an A could earn an A. I played with the idea last year and fell in love, so this year its become practice in my classroom: I created a self-directed, self-paced Mastery learning system." --Excerpt from Teched up Teacher Blog on Mastery Learning written by Chris Aviles-- |
Individualized based on each childMastery learning allows each student to work at their own pace - to move on when they are ready and to take extra time in the material when needed. Students are no longer told to "move on" because they are given the time to develop at their own pace.
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Fixed vs. Growth MindsetsMastery learning teaches students that they CAN change their brain. Having a growth mindset means that your knowledge and intelligence is not static, you can develop your level of knowledge with practice and practice will help you to arrive at that mastery level. Students are encouraged to continually try again until they have achieved mastery.
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