Student Responsibility for Learning

If children are to become lifetime learners, they must be able to assess themselves, set goals, develop and implement a plan of action, utilize resources, and assess progress. Students will not always have a teacher around to spoon feed them information. They need to learn to take on the responsibility for their own learning. This does not mean the teacher leaves the day up to the students! It means that teachers guide students in reviewing their own work, setting goals, and deciding how to achieve those goals. These goals might be: memorizing math facts or formulas, using proper punctuation, correctly conjugating verbs in French class, remembering to bring in homework, or doing an oral presentation without notecards. Rather than students merely doing what teachers tell them to do, we're trying to help students see where they need to improve and help them design a plan to follow to meet with success.