{"id":71,"date":"2016-01-18T19:11:38","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T19:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/robinmichel\/?p=71"},"modified":"2016-01-21T12:10:22","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T12:10:22","slug":"learning-in-the-sweet-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/robinmichel\/2016\/01\/18\/learning-in-the-sweet-spot\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning in the “sweet spot”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"My<\/a>
My classroom doesn’t look like this but sometimes it feels like this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>I love the sweet spot; the period of time in my classroom when things are humming. There is flow; students are engaged, effective feedback is moving project work forward, provocative questions are posed, complex ideas are exchanged, risks are taken, difficulties are expressed and tackled with courage. The sweet spot can be thought of as the optimum point for a number of factors and qualities. In my classroom its a great feeling because I know the students are learning and progressing in their creative work, even if they are struggling. I wish we had more time in that state in every class.<\/p>\n

Either side of the sweet spot is chaos. At the start of the period, everyone is transitioning (mentally and sometimes physically) into and out of the classroom. There are tasks demanding my immediate attention–attendance, set-up, class management, individual explanations, excuses, questions and sometimes just a need for my attention. At the end of the period there is more chaos as studenst need to complete daily tasks and transition to cleaning up. Sometimes they need considerable coaxing to shift and there are questions and concerns aplenty.<\/p>\n

How much time we spend in the sweet spot is determined partly by the length of the periods of chaos. The activities at the start and end of class aren’t unnecessary, but I do have a notion that with a little innovation I might be able to minimize the time taken away from the sweet spot.<\/p>\n

Therefore, I have a goal to make better use of the middle of class time for learning activities. My action plan will focus on students’ transitional experiences and activities in the classroom i.e. the first and last ten minutes of class time. <\/strong><\/p>\n

My plan is to target my Grade 7 and 8 studenst and create an effective, transparent, intuitive process that will help them routinely and independently navigate the complex start up, clean up, hand-in and preparation activities and tasks in my visual art classroom, no matter what media is being used. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love the sweet spot; the period of time in my classroom when things are humming. There is flow; students are engaged, effective feedback is moving project work forward, provocative questions are posed, complex ideas are exchanged, risks are taken, difficulties are expressed and tackled with courage. The sweet spot can be thought of as … Continue reading “Learning in the “sweet spot””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-face-2-face-sessions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/robinmichel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/robinmichel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/robinmichel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/robinmichel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/robinmichel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/robinmichel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/robinmichel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/robinmichel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/robinmichel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}