Creating Authentic Learning Experiences Within a Lesson

Picture your students deliberating about the meaning of concepts and how to translate them into an artifact, debating word choice and how to frame content for a specific audience, and engaging in extended activities because the purpose feels relevant and practical to their lives.

Each one of these is a real example of an authentic learning experience (ALE), and each one reflects how student engagement leads to in-depth learning by grappling with any curriculum. It has been well demonstrated that ALEs support project-based learning units. However, a more common and frequent approach happens in individual daily lessons. Increasing learner engagement by having students see the purpose and value of curriculum to life outside of school is easy and requires minimum resources when focused on one lesson.

Planning ALEs begins with reviewing the learning objectives to unpack the skills and concepts that students must develop. Ask: How are the skills and concepts of this objective represented or applied in our community or the world? Iterate your ideas into one or more activities to include in the lesson.

While there are many powerful ways to produce ALEs, a solid foundation includes one or more of the following:

• Making student learning public
• Involving outside experts or community members
• Establishing a scenario (pretend or real)

As we explore each of these strategies that support ALEs, consider how they can be implemented in one or two lessons—which can later be expanded into units and project-based learning.

Making Student Learning Public

Publishing student work is a quick way to communicate to learners that their ideas matter. This concept is the easiest to implement for ALEs. Publication can include posting the work in the classroom, in school hallways, on classroom blogs, on social media, in a public discussion space like Padlet, or in direct communications to organizations. Regardless of how students’ work will be displayed, knowing that many will view their work will remind them that quality matters even more than if they were simply turning it in to their teacher.

Choosing a target audience can impact the sense of stakes. Focusing on families, community members, or organizations can challenge and grow students’ confidence in what they produce and how they produce it. We want learners to consider the best way to represent an idea and connect with those for whom the work is intended.

When publishing work, include everyone who completes the minimum requirements for quality. Only publishing “the best” defeats the intended purpose of maximizing learner engagement. Curriculum is not a competition. And not publishing all work that meets the criteria gives some students a way out of producing their best work. Each time a student sees their work publicly is an opportunity to build confidence and increase quality for later assignments.

Involving Outside Experts or Community Members

Visualize a salon owner explaining to a class the chemistry knowledge needed to dye hair, or an author giving constructive feedback to students about the craft strategies they used in their writing, or a master gardener fielding questions about how best to grow and care for different plants.

A guest speaker can explain the importance of content-related skills or knowledge to the world outside of school. Having people with this experience helps students make the connection to the value of that knowledge. Often, students will credit the guest speaker for making learning connections, even though the teacher likely stated the same thing multiple times in the past. What matters is that the guest represents an outside voice from a world where the content is applied or referenced.

When involving people and organizations to participate and share knowledge, experience, and expertise, choose one or more of these areas for them based on your needs in a lesson:

• Knowledge: Share what they know through talks and question-and-answer sessions.
• Experience: Give feedback on student work during drafts or after final publication, such as during a panel of experts.
• Expertise: Mentor students through their thinking, such as design thinking steps or the writing process.

Getting guests to speak about or support working on any topic is simple. Start with the families of your students. They represent a pool of outside experts and community members who either can fill the needed role or know someone who can.

Establishing a Scenario 

Placing students into a scenario challenges them to build content knowledge and skills and apply them to find solutions to problems. The scenario can be a pretend setting in which students can role-play. Or it can be an actual situation or need that someone at school or in the community is looking for assistance with.

Pretend scenarios are a starting point for those looking to get started quickly. The storyline and related logistics are controlled by the teacher. The experience could be something short—10 to 15 minutes—with a reflection afterward. Options that can add value include having an expert or community member in a pretend role and having students publish the result of their work, such as posting in the classroom or the school hallways.

Actual scenarios can require more setup when done for the first time. The teacher creates the frame based on research of the real event(s). This version is likely to have an actual audience, which could include an expert or community member. Add some type of public work in the experience, such as a reflection or a simple discussion board post.

AI tools have good value for designing either version of the scenario. When prompting, share the learning objectives, knowledge, skills, and concepts. Also give the time frame and setting for the scenario. Or you can ask for ideas for the setting of the scenario. Be sure to critically evaluate the AI results and do follow-up prompting to further revise and refine the ideas. This revision stage is critical to getting a quality outcome.

Keep Your First Authentic Learning Experiences Manageable

ALEs can successfully happen inside a lesson. They can occur during one lesson step or over the course of the entire lesson. When planning the first few ALEs, there is a danger of getting caught up thinking about all the different add-ons that could make the experience even more authentic; suddenly, you’re considering a weeklong activity or a project-based learning unit. Avoid becoming overwhelmed in this way. Focus on one lesson and using just one of the three ideas. Over time, including the three ideas in one or more lessons will benefit student engagement through rich learning experiences.