Traditional, one-way teaching methods are giving way to dynamic, student-centered learning that values participation, autonomy, and real-world relevance. By shifting the role of students from passive receivers to active contributors, we empower them to think critically, collaborate, and take ownership of their learning.
How to: A Guide to Student Empowerment
- Encourage students to experiment, fail, retry—and rewind!
- Give choices and encourage your students to set their own learning goals
- Acknowledge efforts and foster conversations
- Make topics relevant to your students’ experiences
- Set the ground rules for debate activities
- Gauge and hone student’s skills by assigning them roles
- Encourage students to research, explore, and ask questions
- Provide students with opportunities to self-monitor
- Encourage collaboration
- Teach students how to plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning
Your Express Publishing books will facilitate the process towards student autonomy. Themed modules, ICT research tasks, collaborative activities, and the combined force of print and digital resources help students monitor their progress, pace their learning, and become self-reliant learners who can keep up learning outside the classroom without being micro-managed.
iWonder, our six-level series, makes the most of young learners’ natural curiosity by introducing ICT research activities to help them develop the cognitive skills necessary to explore the book’s topics on their own.
Have You Tried…?
The one-minute note
How much information can you recite in a minute? The teacher passes out a small piece of paper to students, who go on to write the thing that challenged them the most, the skills they acquired during the lesson, or their most important take-away. They, then, exchange the papers and briefly discuss their input. The one-minute note not only solidifies the students’ learning, but it also assesses the points that require additional practice.
Jigsaw
The teacher divides the students into groups, and hands out as many pieces of paper per group as the students are. Each handout only covers part of the topic and the student receiving it should read it and work on it. The task wraps up with the students teaching each other.
Empathy mapping
Empathy mapping, a term quite popular in User Experience Design, challenges students to walk in someone else’s shoes. For this reason, empathy maps can be quite an immersive experience when working on readers or real events through CLIL approaches. Before you start, ask students to work together and brainstorm on what a character might say, think, do, and feel about a particular situation. To follow up, hold an open-class discussion to comment on their ideas and thoughts.
Buzz Groups
Break the class into small groups. Each group discusses a topic or a question for a few minutes to come up with ideas, arguments, or solutions.
Once the time is over, each group shares their ideas with the rest of the class. Alternatively, have the students write their ideas down on post-it notes and ask them to stick them on a designated wall.
References and Further Reading
Edutopia. (2021). Five ways to empower students.
Smart Sparrow. (2016, July 1). Enabling active learning through technology.
Queen’s University. (2021). Active learning strategies.
Cambridge International. (2021). Active learning.
Quigley, A., Muijs, D., & Stringer, E. (n.d.). Metacognition and self-regulated learning. Education Endowment Foundation.
Gholami, V., Attaran, A., & Morady, M. (2021). Towards an interactive EFL class: Using active learning strategies [Ebook]. Mashhad.
SALTISE. (2021). Concept mapping.
Whenham, T. (2021). 15 active learning activities to energize your next college class. Nureva.
