What does authentic teaching and learning look like at Green Acres?

At Green Acres, an “authentic” unit of study, project, or lesson:

Engages

  • Responds to students’ interests;
  • Provides opportunities for students to initiate and adapt activities;
  • Offers students choices;
  • Emphasizes active, hands-on learning experiences; and
  • Encourages students to develop ideas individually and/or collectively, through guided study, collaboration, and discussion.

Challenges

  • Demands in-depth, rather than superficial, understanding of topics;
  • Favors problem-solving, construction and/or manipulation of knowledge over memorization and recitation of knowledge;
  • Offers tasks and assessments that mirror what students will encounter outside of school;
  • Requires proficient student application of “basic skills” as a means to a greater product; and holds all students to high standards of participation, effort, and progress.

Broadens

  • Offers open-ended tasks that have more than one potential “solution” or “product”;
  • Provides opportunities for student creation of projects that feel significant to students and others (not just the teacher);
  • Offers projects that connect to larger, societal issues or contexts;
  • Encourages diversity of thinking;
  • Builds in time for students to reflect on their learning;
  • Helps students learn how to learn (as opposed to just what to learn) and how to be successful thinkers;
  • Offers relevant, thematic connections between disciplines and across topics; and
  • Emphasizes that learning is a life-long activity and that it involves both hard work and joy.