Using Exemplars to Promote More In-Depth Learning

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Editorial - Technology Integration - Open Source

Written by Harry Grover Tuttle

Monday, 04 August 2008 08:19

Teachers can use exemplars, models of high quality learning, in numerous ways to promote students' in-depth learning in a classroom. As educators introduce the learning goal, they can show the students exemplars of the new learning. As elementary social studies students examine exemplars about the similarities between countries from two different continents, they realize that exemplars can be done in various formats, such as a hand-drawn poster, a Power Point presentation, a speech, or an imovie. They come to realize that the in-depth learning is the critical factor not the format. They understand that each exemplar expresses the learning at the same high level and to the same degree of complexity regardless of format. After seeing various exemplars, students have a firm vision of the learning expected of them.

As students do a project in the class, they can refer to the exemplars. The teacher has posted the exemplars on a wall, in a class notebook, on the class Web site/wiki/blog, or on the school server. The middle school art students can look at the exemplars for guidance as they make sure that they are doing high quality work in expressing the same topic in two different cultural forms in their art. The exemplars serve as scaffolding to help the students include the characteristics that represent each culture. After the students have created the two art objects, they write an explanation of what they did to include the various components of each culture. Again, they can look at the exemplar for assistance in doing high quality work.

After students do their own work, then the instructor can have them evaluate their work against an exemplar. A business teacher assigns a persuasion letter for homework. The next class, she has her students compare their own letters against the exemplar persuasion letter. They write in the margins of their papers their strengths and indicate the specific areas for improvement. Then she has them modify their present homework to include their improvements so that their homework will be of the same high quality as the exemplar.

Teachers may worry that students will only copy the exemplars and therefore not really learn the goal. The exemplars serve to demonstrate the learning concepts but are not exact duplicates of the present assignment. The exemplar uses a different form or a different context. An English teacher can show an exemplary contrast essay about the theme of love in two novels while she has her students write a contrast essay about the theme of courage in two short stories.

Educators may feel that they do not have exemplars. They can look through students' work from previous years and they can see if their colleagues have exemplary student work. They might find some student exemplary work on Internet (try Google Images). The teachers can piece together the work of several students to create one exemplary middle school science project; they take the introduction from Paco, the research from Huan, and the conclusions from Rowan to create one exemplar. They can create their own exemplar if they cannot find one. As they create the exemplar, they go through all the mental steps that the students have to go through and, therefore, they can offer suggestions to guide the students in the process.

Teachers use exemplars to assist students in the introduction to the lesson, during the lesson, and in the assessment phase of the lesson. The teacher knows that the exemplars guide students in showing in-depth mastery of the learning goals.

Dr. Harry Grover Tuttle focuses on assessing and improving student learning through low- and high-tech tools.