This learning event is what we usually associate with learning: the teacher offers new information or enables students to find and explore the new information needed to develop further awareness or acquiring skills. In carrying out this learning event, it is important to ensure that this information is provided in a way that is comprehensible to the student, i.e. by linking it to what has been learned in the past, enabling him/her to understand what is most important in this information. Teacher must present the new information in small enough chunks or appropriate to students’ perception.This is the moment in the learning process, where it is also important to give students the opportunity to discover regularities on their own by using a carefully chosen base of examples, to create definitions in their own words; observing, comparing and grouping common and different characteristics, understand how to proceed by following the new rules or following any procedures, while bearing in mind that the primary task for the student at this stage is to familiarise himself/herself with the essence of the new learning content. [Skola 2030.lv]
The main task of this learning event is to help the student to prepare to deposit the information into the long-term memory. For this to happen, the student must find a place for this information in his/her “information storage system”. Some students can do this on their own if they have highly developed self-managed learning skills, but a large part will be helped by a teacher-led process – methods that guide learning which the teacher will use to involve and support each student.
In the context of this learning event, the teacher will decide whether he/she will enable students to discover and construct new knowledge themselves or to transfer this knowledge to students in a ready-made way.In the first way, students will gain deeper understanding and store knowledge in long-term memory. On the other hand, the second option’s advantage is that it uses significantly less time for the transfer of information. However, that does not guarantee that students will receive and understand the information. When choosing to transfer information directly to students, the teacher should identify issues or tasks that the student will think of when listening to information and what will help to highlight the most important parts, structure it, and otherwise contribute to a deeper understanding of what he/she has heard. This is also the moment when we can talk to students about the strategies we use to achieve specific objectives: whether that would be general reading, remembering, critical thinking, learning strategies or any subject-specific strategies that might be useful for a student to achieve the objectives. [Skola 2030.lv]
In this learning event, students are given the opportunity to make sure that they are learning – moving towards the results that need to be achieved. In the context of this learning event, the most important issue is: what task the student needs to do in order to find out the extent to which he has moved towards the learning objectives. The task or tasks must enable the student to ascertain whether and to what extent he/she has understood, or enable the ability to demonstrate all the knowledge and skills included in the learning objective. It is important to bear in mind that this is still a learning phase, and therefore tests the progress of the student towards the learning objectives. Furthermore, at this stage it is still possible that the student does not understand or makes mistakes, and proposes a way to improve the understanding or skills. This learning event goes hand-in-hand with the next one, where the student provides useful information on how to improve performance. [Skola 2030.lv]
Information on how the student is progressing towards the learning objective during the lesson is crucial for students to identify the incomplete or flawed knowledge or skills, and to confirm the correct ones so that they can continue to use them. In order to improve, it is essential that students receive feedback during the learning process, not only at the end of the learning process. In addition, feedback means not only information about whether the task was done correctly, but also what to do next. The fact that a student knows that something has not been done correctly does not automatically mean that the student knows what to do to change it and improve his/her knowledge or skills.
In a large class, a teacher himself/herself will not always be able to provide feedback to every student. To address this issue, the teacher can organise tasks which help students to get feedback using technology, classmates or themselves. In order to ensure that feedback is high-quality and really directs students towards better outcomes, students should assess their own and their classmates' works, taking into account very specific indications and criteria directly focusing on the learning objectives. [Skola 2030.lv]