First of all, I would like to thank all the students for their active engagement and participation during this demonstration class, but especially for doing so on a daily basis throughout the first month of this academic year. Because of this, I cannot wait to see the upcoming progress that our students will make.

To guide students, I provided the following Learning Objective, “Explain how Jonas responds and changes as a result of his interactions with the Giver (another character).”

In addition to the academics, Tsinglan values holistic education and therefore SEL (Social and Emotional Learning). Therefore, the texts selected for our young adult students are most often “coming-of-age” stories. This means the protagonist faces the same kinds of struggles that our students encounter on a daily basis. The fictional characters learn to deal with conflicts similar to what our students encounter, but ultimately overcome. This provides learning and teaching opportunities that not only encourage academic rigor, but also growth as a young member of society.

The learning strategy I utilized is called “Jigsaw.” Jigsaw requires all students to work both independently and collaboratively, and includes all elements of SWRL (speaking, writing, reading, listening) and our 4Cs (Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Confidence). These were successfully demonstrated by all students of the class.

Additionally, this learning and teaching strategy encourages each student to make her/his own discoveries, become an “expert” in answering a question, and to explain to other students who are not yet an “expert” in answering that particular question. Students learn mastery of a skill through teaching their peers, and this is the best way to learn. As teachers, part of our responsibility is to scaffold guide students through these mastery opportunities.

Finally, we closed the class with a plenary session in which students discussed how we practiced each of the 4Cs during the class.