How to Establish a Self-Directed learning environment.

What does it look like when we engage our children in their own learning? And how can we give them ownership over their own learning outcomes?

Let’s say I was teaching a group of 5 year olds about dinosaurs? I’d informed them about the Triassic period, we’d looked at diagrams and watched a short clip and as the teacher, I’d explained my favourite dinosaurs and why. (Stegosaurus)

What next?

The next two questions are so important that I can’t stress them enough. Simply ask the children these two questions.

1. “Now what would you like to know about dinosaurs?”

2. “How would you like to show me your research?”

Once we ask these questions and give the children freedom over the next steps of their research, we find that their engagement levels rise dramatically, they feel they have ownership over their learning, they’re masters of their own destiny and we allow them to show their research in a format that suits them.

And if you’re lucky, as I was. You might get a little boy who tells you that he wants to research dinosaur skeletons and he wants to make a poster all about them, so he can teach younger children about how they lived.

(Self guided, directed, research based learning)

And that’s how you give ownership to your students of any age. ❤️

#montessori #teacher #children