Learning From a Felt Need

Students learn best from a "felt-need," when learning takes place in a greater, authentic context. What this means is that instead of a teacher presenting a lesson on, say, quotation marks, the teacher will give the students a writing assignment in which they have to write about an authentic conversation between two people. The teacher can now ask how the reader knows when someone is speaking. Students will have a "felt need" to learn about this punctuation mark and use it in their writing. The teacher can now teach the lesson! The question is not whether or not teachers will continue to present their lessons - what they are trying to perfect is when they will teach the lessons in the learning process.