BENTONVILLE, Ark. — There is a new way of teaching at a Bentonville Elementary School and it's the only place in the state where you'll find it.
It's called visible learning.
The concept behind visible learning is it allows the students to be in charge of their own learning. Apple Glen Elementary Principle, Tracey Wood, explains the new concept.
"Just teaching them how to how to make learning visible, which means it's not a secret, it's not, you know, we're not asking them to try to guess at what it looks like, we're going to show them exactly where we want them to go, and then help them build their pathway to get there," says Wood.
Apple Glen Elementary is the first school in the state to use this technique. She says teachers still have control over the classroom while giving the students more of a personal responsibility.
"They're responsible for really knowing this is my learning goal. This is what my teacher needs me to learn by the end of this unit. Here's some steps I can take to get there. We teach them what it means to be collaborators and problem solvers," Wood said.
Wood says she sees this teaching method catching on very quickly.
"I know there's several schools, even just around us here in Northwest Arkansas that have started this journey. And they have had their first school-wide training this school year, in August to kick it off, which is super exciting. We've already had schools reach out wanting to know when are we going to open up our building so they can come visit and see what it looks like in action," said Wood.
As far as the success rate, Woods says she couldn't be happier.
"We're seeing those impacts on kids, we're seeing it in not only in their confidence, their data, we're seeing kids achieve the higher levels than we've ever seen."
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