Authentic Learning
Authentic Learning
Through the use of real-world experiences, students become problem-solvers, collaborators, critical thinkers, inventors, and creators. Through the use of global content, students begin to ask and think about their world in new and innovative ways.
Click the + below to view the Authentic Learning Competencies.
Educator promotes discovery, creativity, inventiveness and innovation in the learning environment.
Educator Exemplars
a. Plans learning activities with a mindset toward inquiry. Educator encourages learners to explore and discover rather than telling them answers or providing possible solutions.
b. Provides opportunities for exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems.
c. Promotes the use of alternative processes and strategies for solving problems, allowing learners to grapple with various ideas and solutions.
d. Promotes wonderment and curiosity through modeling.
e. Supports the process of creative thinking, including idea generation, analysis, evaluation and refinement of ideas.
f. Engages learners in using digital tools to explore, discover, create and engage in real-world issues and solve authentic problems. 
g. Takes advantage of “just in time” learning opportunities so that student interest drives instruction.
Learner Exemplars
a. Engage in activities that challenge them to think outside the box.
b. Approach learning challenges with curiosity and excitement.
c. Explore real-world issues and solve authentic problems.
d. Generate new ideas to enhance creative thinking; thinking is refined through analysis and evaluation.
e. Develop unique solutions and products.
f. Use digital tools to support exploration, discovery, creative thinking and engagement with real-world issues and to solve authentic problems.
Educator creates a learning environment where questioning promotes curiosity, critical thinking, and inquiry.
Educator Exemplars
a. Uses a variety of questioning strategies (e.g., asking intriguing questions, demonstrating how to ask complex questions, etc.) to engage learners, guide learning, foster critical thinking and encourage reflection.
b. Provides structured opportunities and strategies for learners to generate a variety of questions, classify, analyze and improve their questions to promote complex ideas.
c. Uses strategies that encourage learners to consider questions deeply and participate in conversations (e.g., small-group discussions, think-alouds, think-pair-share).
d. Uses wait time to allow learners to process questions and to encourage discussion.
Learner Exemplars
a. Develop questions that reflect curiosity, creativity and innovation.
b. Generate questions in order to design investigations and drive their learning.
c. Write, classify, analyze and improve questions (e.g., move from close-ended to more complex, open-ended questions).
d. Pose questions that go beyond factual knowledge and require inference, analysis or synthesis of multiple types of information
e. Derive new and more complex questions to investigate as they pursue their questions
Educator cultivates complex thinking and knowledge construction.
Educator Exemplars
a. Instructs learners on how to use critical skills such as creating an argument, examining points of view, explaining reasoning, making assumptions, supporting arguments, etc.
b. Provides scaffolds (e.g., reception, transformation and production scaffolds) to aid learners in organizing and evaluating information.
c. Provides tools for learners to collect evidence and to clearly communicate claims.
d. Encourages and clarifies articulation of learner understanding through questioning, paraphrasing, etc.
e. Creates opportunities for learners to engage in conversations to help them connect real-world topics and current situations.
f. Engages learners in reflective activities that help them become aware of, evaluate, regulate and extend their thinking.
Learner Exemplars
a. Engage in conversations (with peers and the educator) that demonstrate making connections between new information and prior knowledge.
b. Use and/or create mind maps/scaffolding tools to organize and evaluate information.
c. Choose appropriate tool(s), including technology tools (e.g., online surveys, mind-mapping software, spreadsheets, infographics), to collect, organize and analyze data.
d. Understand and can verbally explain the learning goals and/or essential question for the work they are trying to accomplish.
e. Support claims with evidence.
f. Engage in reflective activities (e.g., journals, exit slips, conversations, blogging, etc.), connecting new understandings to past, present and future learning.
g. Determine where they are in the learning process, what they understand, what is unclear and what needs to be done to solve a problem or task.
h. Become self-directed learners as they regulate their behaviors, correct errors in their thinking, monitor progress, and set goals for future learning.
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