Student-centered learning

As a teacher, you probably already know that maintaining strong involvement from students is one of the main challenges of teaching. Even though they’re the main focus of school education, some children tend to lose interest in learning and become bored in class. And when students stop feeling engaged in their education, their grades can drop and they can feel even less motivated about going to school. To keep children inspired every day, teachers can shift their teaching methods and set up new ways of learning, like learner-centered education.

What is student-centered learning?

Student-centered learning, also called SCL or learner-centered education, is a new approach to teaching that places students as the actors of their own education. Instead of the classical instruction method where they passively listen to the teacher, students practicing student-centered learning have the opportunity to decide what they want to learn and how they want to learn it. This gives students great decision-making power and allows them to take the lead in their learning process. By implementing student-centered learning in your classroom, you not only boost their involvement in class, but also their self-confidence and creativity.

Choosing to practice learner-centered education means you will have to collaborate with your students and believe in their capacity to take things in hand. It’s also the ideal method for implementing group projects in your classroom in order to encourage collaboration among students. A class working with SCL methods forms a great environment to practice interdisciplinary learning as well, which means you’ll get to work more closely with your fellow educators to develop the kids’ interests. With a student-centered learning approach, you will put emphasis on teamwork and collaboration on all levels.

What can the teacher do to practice student-centered learning?

As a teacher, you might be wondering how you can apply the new SCL method to your classroom. Fortunately, you can implement learner-centered education simply by following a few steps and recommendations when starting a new lesson with your students.

Show them relevance

More often than not, students don’t really understand why they have to learn a specific topic or vocabulary, which leads to them interest. By showing them how learning a particular lesson is relevant from their own perspective, you will encourage them to take interest in it and show them the benefits of learning.

Let them choose the content

Another great and easy way to implement student-centered learning in your classroom is to involve students in the choice of what they will have to learn. Even though the skills and knowledge they need to acquire are already decided by the program, you can match them with your students’ own interests to increase their engagement. Simply ask them what they want to learn in relation to the topic of your next lesson. You can brainstorm together to see what stands out the most!

Personalize your teaching methods

Since every student has their own way of understanding and learning, you can try to fit your teaching strategy to what you know about them. For instance, you can offer them 3 options for the type of assessment based on what makes them more comfortable: some students may prefer preparing a written report of what they have learned, whereas some others might like to do an oral presentation, or even a creative demonstration. Of course, you will still be there all along the way to help them set appropriate goals and self-reflect on their education. 

How can Klassly help you set up student-centered learning in your classroom?

As Klassly is designed to help teachers strengthen their relationship with students and their parents, it offers a wide variety of tools that can be very useful when implementing student-centered learning in the classroom. First, the app allows you to communicate more easily with your students’ parents, which means you’ll be able to collaborate with them to establish a student-centered learning environment. Thanks to Klassly’s exclusive ‘Know Your Students’ (KYS) feature, parents can give precious insight to the teacher about their child’s difficulties or preferences when it comes to learning. Using KYS, you’ll be able to implement efficient and individual strategies for each student.

Klassly also comes with a homework manager service, Klasswork, which can help you see if a student has difficulties with certain tasks. Klasswork not only lets you classily your assignments by topic and color, but also lets you know if a student needs help with their work at home. Lastly, our exclusive Klassbook feature is great way to encourage student engagement throughout the year. With it, you can transform your class timeline into a customizable yearbook containing all your favorite memories from the school year. It’s the perfect way to show your students’ progress and relive the magic of learning that happened in the classroom.