Making Learning Visible

How do we distinguish knowledge, skills, and thinking from….learning? How do we make learning visible, so that we might surface and document powerful discoveries about the influence of our teaching on learners? Most of us are in groups all the time. But are these groups learning groups? When does a group become a learning group? Can a group construct its own way of learning? Can showing children's learning, lead to new ways of learning?
 
Here, at SMIS, we conduct a half-yearly MLV (Funderstanding - Understanding with fun) from Pre K to G2. 
MLV involves demonstrating what children have learned over a span of six months and presenting it in different ways in front of an audience -which definitely include their parents but could also have other people like teachers, visitors to school etc. Other than the presentation of learning that is done by children themselves, we even display students' work collected over time which gives the children as well as parents an opportunity to realize how each child's work is unique and distinct.  Here the children do not rehearse or rote learn scripts given by teachers, rather they engage in classroom like activities to show the varied skills. Comparison is not encouraged.  The audience is not a passive participant. It participates by asking questions to the children to see how far children are clear with the concepts. We also document their work in the form of visuals which parents can view from time to time.  
MLV is an exhibition: 

• Exhibition here differs from celebration, in a way that here the emphasis is on the learning rather than on the product.
• Although “how much” a child has learned is more important to parents, but in the long run “How” he has learned becomes more important as “how much” is content and “how”, being skill based, will remain with the child forever.

Author

Bhavisha Kotecha