3R is not new.
Sure, it has the makings of an educational trend, but as I’m sitting through the training, I’m realizing how much ICLE has incorporated other successful ideas from educational theory that we’ve been doing. (Like using Bloom’s Taxonomy to graph out the level of thinking skills. If you use something else other than Bloom’s (like Marzano’s) as a district, put that as your Y axis.)
Rigor (Level of Critical Thinking) as the Y Axis, Relevance (Level of Application Outside of the Discipline) as the X Axis:
Image used from the International Center for Leadership in Education.
3R (Rigor+Relevance+Relationships) is a way to reflect on your lessons. It creates a shared language so that you can measure how deep the critical thinking goes compared to how applicable to real-life the lesson is.
That’s tough because sometimes we teachers have a hard time evaluating ourselves.
But the important thing to realize is that just because a lesson falls in quadrant A doesn’t mean that it’s a bad lesson. We just need to spread out the learning opportunities (and look for ways to tweak our lessons).
How does rigor and relevance impact students?
Rigor and relevance lets the student know that what we’re doing is worth the time they’ve invested. School is something that they need, not just something they’re supposed to do. Through lessons that have real-life meaning, students develop higher level thinking skills that can be applied in all content areas. It creates better understanding, retention, and student success.
When you’re operating educational transactions at higher level thinking, it’s a lot easier to tackle more performance objectives in one fell swoop.
Think about your own learning. Where you’ve been involved and taken more ownership, you remember what you’ve done and perhaps, dare I say, enjoyed what you did.
Relevance makes rigor possible.
Dick Jones dropped some resource names in his presentation (I’ve chimed in with some of the places I look at, as well).
How Technology is Affecting Culture:
What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis (If you don’t want to buy the book, check out his blog at Buzzmachine.com)
Growing Up Digital by Don Tapscott (He also wrote Wikinomics)
A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Tom Friedman
(By the same guy who wrote The World is Flat.)
The Effect of Letting Standardized Testing Drive Instruction
Not on the Test by Tom Chapin
(Yes. He’s related to that Chapin. That explains the song.)
For more resources from the workshop, check out http://public.me.com/rdjleader
Aw, go ahead, buy it. 😉