A Learners’ View (ALV) Is Of Choices On The Shortest And Fastest Path To Learning, The Oxygen Of Social Life.

Main Article: Checklists for Educators

1.0 TEACHING BLENDS CHOICES teachers make for lessons with choices learners will likely make while learning those lessons. Blending follows patterns that increase the likelihood of accelerating, increasing, and deepening (AIDing) learning.

Checklist

1. Do I have a measurable point or objective for this lesson?
2. Is this a 20 second lesson?
3. For what objective is this point a prerequisite?
4. Which state academic performance standard does this point meet?
5. Is the objective an essential part of meeting that standard ?
6. Which of the five (5) generic ALV questions does the objective answer?
7. Have I analyzed the objective, so you can see, hear, etc. learners progressing toward it?
8. Does the lesson use the prerequisite skills learners have to meet this objective?
9. Will it accelerate learning?
10. Will it increase learning?
11. Will it deepen learning?
12. Will it reduce failure-to-learn?
13. Will it reduce rationing of learning?
14. Which principles of learning (CEKSS) will you apply during instruction?
15. Which active ingredients of learning (AIL) will you use?
16. How will learners demonstrate today that they learned this lesson?

Narrative to Support the Checklist

Two Rules

From a learners’ view, here are two basic rules to AID learning in your classroom.

1. You choose what, where, and when learning should occur.
2. Learners choose if and how they will learn from your choices and how your choices benefit learners to do so.

The blending of teaching and learning are that simple to say!

Lessons Solve Problems

For learners, learning is solving problems to their benefit. Lessons present problems that fit into one or more of five categories. Teachers choose which and how many of these problems to include in each lesson. Number 1 is the simplest problem for learners to solve; number 2 is the most difficult to solve, because it requires solving Numbers 1 through 4 first.

1. What is it? (Name it. Describe it. Say what it does. show me what it does. Find it among other things, as in a multiple choice test.)
2. What is it not? (Name, show, or tell me something: That looks, works, or produces different results.)
3. What is like it? (Name, show or tell me something: That looks like it. That works like it. That produces the same result.)
4. What comes next? (Name, show, or tell me something that comes next in this sequence.) And
5. What is missing? (Name show, or tell me what is missing from this sequence.)

To solve these problems, learners look and listen for you to tell or show them the specific vocabulary, logic, and ways the most informed people use to solve them. Each problem is a lesson, even when you say your lesson is something else.

Learners Pay the Cost of Trial-and-Errors

Learners pay the cost for learning your lessons with time, effort, and other non-renewable personal resources.

Learners use trial-and-errors through as many as 15 choice points to learn something, to solve each problem. The more trial-and-errors, the less likely it is that a learner will learn from your lesson..

Three Questions of Learners

To learn during each lesson, learners try to answer three questions:

1. What do I have to do?
2. What do I get for doing it? and
3. What will it cost (in time, effort, material goods) me to learn it?

Teachers answer these questions for yourselves when you offer lessons. Learners choose whether or not to answer these questions to learn your lessons. People learn when teachers’ choices match learners’ choices.

Elements of Learning

Researchers have described elements of social patterns that form hierarchies of physical sensations to which learners will most likely respond, next most likely, etc.

For example, learners likely see motion before something static, red before blue, notice the difference between a contrasting and dominant sounds. These descriptions clarify choices learners make while learning.

Starting Class

Use ALV in the first 20 seconds of each class session to capture each learner’s attention for your first lesson. I have just 3,000 seconds in each 50 minute class period with you.

Accuracy and Precision

Accuracy and precision of lessons matter. The fewer seconds you use to show and tell learners what is relevant in each lesson, the quicker learners will solve the problem in your lesson. This way, more learning results from your lessons. Nobody can get any seconds back, so please, don’t waste them and thus ration learning.

Suggestion

If you’re open to a suggestion, plan and instruct a string of 20 second lessons for each class session. Start the first lesson as learners enter your classroom. Learners can learn more that way.

When you use ALV to teach, learners will show and tell you how to adjust your lessons in order to accelerate the amount and increase their rate of learning promptly.

Respectfully

Respectfully, and bluntly, please, do not interpret what I say or say what you think I mean. I say what I mean, and mean what I say. I’m that simple. If you have not yet earned or nearly earned a 1.0 rating, then you know what ratings interpretations get you and your students.

Stop using words like belief, thinking, cognition, developmental stages, meaning, knowledge, understanding, attitude, and so forth when planning lessons for and talking about me. These are interpretations and inferences about learning, not descriptions of what you can verify that learners do to learn.

Your learners may learn sometimes when you use those words to plan lessons or to talk about us to other people. Chances for using them to AID learning is probably like flipping a coin or worse. They’re for a 0.5 teacher over time.

If you doubt me, look at your record of successful lessons where everyone in class learned everything in your lessons. Now, compare results from your lessons that apply what learners do to learn. Are both a perfect 1.0?

Lists

List problems for learners to learn to solve in your school’s curriculum guide, state standards, and exams.

Tell learners at the beginning of each class how many seconds they have, on average, to learn to solve each problem(s) of the day in order to learn everything on those lists. Offer lessons that take learners no longer than that average to learn.

Just teach the facts on those lists. Learners generalize to what you call “meaning” by the way you arrange problems for them to solve.

Be That 1.0 Teacher of Your Dreams

Become a 1.0 Teacher. Choose for learners to learn something from you each moment of and for your class.

Learners expect you to meet the same standard in your teaching that you use to learn during your professional development meetings.

And, don’t forget, a learners’ view is of choices on the straightest and fastest path to learning, the oxygen of social life.

Related Reading

1. 1.0 Teaching
2. 7 Signs You May Be Rationing Learning
3. 20 Second Lesson Module
4. Active Ingredients of Learning (AIL)
5. ALV for Teachers
6. ALV Path
7. Cascade of Questions of Ima Learner
8. Essential Elements of Learning (EIL)
9. Interviews and Conversations
10. Principles of Learning (POL)
11. Teachers Do the Hokey Pokey
12. Managing Classroom Clutter
13. Meet Ima Learner

Related Resources

1. Frequently Asked Questions about ALV

Article Last Update: 08/16/2014