Strategies to Move Beyond the Grade Level or Subject Area
● Genius Hour : where students are given time to explore their passions and interests, learn, and create.
● Maker Projects : where students learn by doing! They can tinker, build, engineer, craft, program, and create with anything from cardboard to sophisticated technology projects.You don’t have to have a fancy Maker Space filled with expensive equipment. You can start with something as simple as a Cardboard Challenge . Also, check out this great article by Vicki Davis: How the Maker Movement is Moving into Classrooms .
● Entrepreneurial Learning : Did you know that by 2020, 40% of the workforce will be self-employed ((2017). Intuit. Retrieved 15 April 2017, from https://http-download.intuit.com/http.intuit/CMO/intuit/futureofsmallbusiness/intuit_2020_report.pdf. With little to no start-up costs, online businesses can be started by just about anyone, including students. Help cultivate entrepreneurial skills like risk-taking, practicing the art of curiosity, perseverance, problem-solving, and taking ownership of the learning and enterprise!
● Design Thinking : Design Thinking is a creative problem-solving protocol to create innovative solutions. The four phases of Design Thinking: (1) gather inspiration, (2) generate ideas, (3) make ideas tangible, and (4) share your story. IDEO’s Teacher’s Guild is a great place to start for ideas in the classroom. Also, check out this great article from Edutopia about Design Thinking in Education .
Information from Shake Up Learning, LLC 2018,