What is deeper Learning?

Deeper learning is looking beyond the surface level. Challenging the students in our care to go beyond looking at the 'what' and looking more into the 'why?'
With deeper learning it is important that we consider looking at learning from all angles, rather than from isolated lenses. With deeper learning we are diving into something that is increasingly interesting for our learners and something that provides them with skills they can use in the future. Best projects come about because of learner interest.We have to find better ways to increase learner interest. An example of this could be looking into a character from a particular time, and sharing an authentic learning experience i.e reenacting a character rather than reading a chapter from a book.

As teachers we can sometimes be too focused on content given instruction. We need to delve deeper. The purpose of schooling should be to focus on greater skills, life skills . Deeper learning involves teaching the students in front of us, engaging with them in authentic ways, which is more than simply teaching the curriculum.Deeper Learning involves real world problems and higher order thinking skills. Deeper Learning requires a teacher to allow students to immerse themselves into their learning, to step back from traditional methods and allow students to create something more....something amazing!

Recently we have been working on a performance of The Battle of the Mountains in our hub which we are presenting to the community in the last week of the term. Initially our students had choice about what they wanted to contribute to the performance: set design, dancing, acting, singing, technology, being part of the chorus or something else. The students then developed these skills in workshops with different teachers and next worked out how they would enhance to script for our performance.  Students have been engaged in small and larger group tasks and have further enhanced what we are doing by adding in extra ideas to add to either a performance item or a costume. Students have seemed excited and focused....This has made me think....How do we re-create what they have done in terms of the performance in our learning programmes?

Our focus is to be more collaborative due to our world decreasing in size and us not knowing the jobs our students might be doing in the future!