Education with intention

Education with intention, the connectedness of the classroom to the real world, and teacher assessing students on how they used their knowledge, not how well they remembered the facts!, is the only way we should see education. Gavin McCormack, LinkedIn 

I saw this on a post today and it really resonated with me. As a teacher I have found one of my best tools has been to ask students ‘how did they....’ and often the student is unable to tell me or will say they guessed an answer. This leads on to me helping them make connections with the skills, knowledge and experience they know, but sometimes do not realise they know, and how they used this to “guess” the answer. 

On Tuesday I was working with a 7 year old who is dyslexic, via zoom.  She had cards with the numbers one to ten written on them and was asked to find me the two cards that had a sum of 16 and difference of 2. Within seconds she showed me 9 and 7 but looked unsure of herself. When we delved into her choice she realised the earlier task of finding 3 cards with a sum of 14 and her base ten knowledge had enabled her to pick out the correct cards. Her confidence and self-esteem are blossoming. Teaching is a joy.