Purposeful Learning and Vision for Readiness: Align Instruction to Purposeful Learning

Female teacher and diverse group of students closely examine a robotics component in an engineering class.

When students cheat on exams, it is because our school system values grades more than students value learning.

– Neil deGrasse Tyson


ACTIVITY

Assess how much purposeful learning is happening in your school. Begin to develop a set of tools to support purposeful learning every period of every day.

Introduction to Aligning Instruction and Learning: 15-minute Activity

Watch the below video, Why Perfect Grades Don’t Matter.

Reflect on where there are bright spots in your school for aligning instruction and learning, to what is relevant to your students’ futures, and moving alignment away from simply grades and assessments.

Next, watch the below Inflexion video, Aligning Instruction and Learning, to get an overview of why it’s so important to align instruction and learning with a shared vision for readiness.

Brainstorm at least 3-5 ways you/your school can support purposeful learning every period of every day.

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3 Big Plays: Highlight Your Vision for Readiness in Your School Culture

Purposeful Learning focuses on the alignment between learning approaches and a holistic, shared, vision for readiness. It includes universal approaches to instructional design such as common language, frameworks, and philosophy, that allow students to see continuity between every class period, every day. Some Big Plays your school can begin planning in this effort is employ macro-structures, rally around a focus, and shift the grading structure.

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