Resources for Educators

Teaching Tip

From the Teacher’s Aide Newsletter

2015 July

Prepare Your Students for the Real World

While we have focused lately on preparing students for licensing exams, we know what you really want to do is prepare your students for the real world. In doing so, you will naturally be preparing them to answer those thought-provoking, scenario-type questions on the MBLEx (or any other licensing exam) that require judgment. So, here’s a tip for planning activities that actually require students to use critical thinking skills”? show them what NOT to do.

For example, give them a real life situation before you teach them a particular topic, and ask them to choose from 2-4 possible scenarios. (You need to have a plan for how each of the scenarios plays out.) However, unlike multiple choice questions, make each of the scenarios plausible, but not really that good. In other words, don’t even make the ideal scenario available to them (but don’t tell them that). Have them vote as a class on the “best” scenario.

Then, for each scenario that is chosen, play it through as a class, learning why it ends up being a bad idea. Once you have gone through each of the not-so-good scenarios, don’t even come up with an ideal scenario. Instead, talk about what could change in each of the sample scenarios to make it a better choice. Because sometimes in real life, the not-so-great scenario is not so bad either, with just a bit of tweaking.