Saturday, July 23, 2011

Making Learning Whole by David Perkins

The term full circle happened to me professionally when we had our book club meeting at my house last Tuesday.  The circle started with me reading about the book on a blog, and I bought it.  I then followed the #Allwrite tweets for two days and saw the book was mentioned.  I tweeted to my friends who were there let's do a book club on my dock.   Mary Lee and and Cathy at Reflect & Refine took me up on my offer and finally we met. Mary Lee was first to post at Year of Reading and she captured our book club so well that I "stole" her post about Making Learning Whole .  I enjoyed how David Perkins connected the game of baseball with helping students learn to play the whole game.  I echo all of her thinking especially the connections that I have made through twitter this summer. The past two days I was lucky to have lunch with my friends from school, and they don't follow twitter. I offered some advice and start with being a quiet observer for awhile and then all of a sudden your learning community will hit a grand slam!  In addition, I've decided to build my own baseball field of learning so here are my key bases:

Home Plate:  Teach today what learners will need to understand and act on tomorrow because tomorrow is a moving target.  pg. 220

First Base:  Making work visible- takes steps along the way and the final results need to be shared in order to make the game worth playing.  p.180

Second Base:  Aptitude is not the same things as attitude. pg. 70

Third Base:  Part of the art is throwing out what is not so important yet, while leaving the general spirit and shape of the game intact. p.38

Thanks Mary Lee and Cathy  I absolutely agree with your comments as well on Mary Lee's post -you two hit it out of park for me!!


In tribute to the game I love here is a small clip-enjoy!

3 comments:

  1. Outa the park with this one! I love your bases! I love that you "stole" my post!

    We'll have to schedule some "batting practice" throughout the year!

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  2. First: your advice was "spot on" - you dip your toe into this virtual teacher-as-learner community, and all of a sudden your world just expands so much.
    Second: As a baseball freak (the Boston Red Sox in particular) I love the baseball analogy! That one is a home run, Maria!

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  3. Tara I LOVE the Boston Red Sox. For 10 years I went with Bill from Literate Lives to Boston with 40 fifth graders and LOVED every minute of the trip except for the very LONG bus ride home! Something else we have in common-that's a home run!

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