Definition of Student Centered Learning: A method of teaching in which students' interests, learning styles, prior knowledge, strengths and challenges are known and used by a teacher to facilitate authentic, deep understanding for the students.

Scenario 1: Students in a 5-6 contained classroom are learning about how they can help the environment.  Neither their town nor school participates in any sort of recycling or composting.  The students will research their families and neighbors to find out about their thoughts about these topics. They will also learn about which foods can be composted and which items can be recycled.  As a hook I think I will dump the garbage out after a lunch and have the students sort the garbage into 3 piles: garbage, recycling and compost. The teacher will pull out the Science GEs and go over them with the class.  The unit's title at the moment is "Food: where does it come from and where does it go". The teacher will give them a survey on Google Spreadsheets to find out their prior knowlege about the subject. Plant cycles and food webs will be incorporated as well as sustainability, so it would help to know what the students know about composting, gardening and food webs. The teacher, working with the students, will develop a rubric that will guide the students in their process and the teacher in assessing the results.  As a group, but guided by the teacher, the class puts out different ways that they can be assessed.  Some of these ideas are a public service announcement (with digital storytelling), a podcast, a brochure for the community and a powerpoint presentation. The students now will discuss the different aspects of the unit and specify different interests. Groups are formed from those interests and focus statements are created within the group.  This leads to research and interviews and models and will all lead up to a schoolwide composting program. Presentations will be made to the middle schoolers and parents at a local foods banquet that the middle schoolers will be putting on as a part of their "making informed choices about food" unit that is being made by the social studies part of this team.

Scenario 2:

7th and 8th grade Language Arts

Students are engaged in a unit about making informed decisions and recognizing/brainstorming the impacts these decisions have on the community.  Students are developing a deep understanding about how to gather, analyze, and use new information to make decisions about the foods they consume.  Students  have been introduced to the grade expectations, standards, and the learning objectives for the unit.  Additionally, the instructor has given students an overview of the summative assessment - a local foods banquet in which every student will learn to cook a dish using a key ingredient that can be produced in Vermont.  The choice, however, will lie with the students as to whether they will obtain and use this ingredient from a local/sustainable or industrial source.

At the initiation of the unit, students will be asked to use all of their senses to closely observe two food items: local berries and artificially berry flavored candy.  Students will brainstorm all of the differences between these two foods, thinking about taste, appearance, possible ingredients, and method of production.  Students will also engage in expressive writing about the following prompt: Describe your favorite food using as many senses as you can to show how delicious this food really is.  As a followup, students will brainstorm as many ingredients as they can list in their favorite food, identifying the ingredients that they think can be produced locally.

Based on interests, students will research food items that can be produced in Vermont, including where their chosen item is grown/produced and how this food item can arrive on your plate.  Meanwhile, students will also engage several teacher-selected informational texts meant to highlight the differences between industrial and sustainable food systems.  Texts will be selected along a range of difficulty, and preassessments and formative assessments will be used to place students in guided reading groups.  Students will express their reactions to readings on a class blog.

Finally, students will prepare for the local-foods banquet by taking their chosen food item and finding a recipe they would like to make featuring this key ingredient.  Students will plan a food-related fund raiser aimed at raising enough money for each student to purchase the ingredients they will need for their dish.  Students will make their dish at home, deciding individually whether they will use a their key ingredient in a  locally or industrially produced form.  Their choice will be justified and supported in a persuasive essay.  Family and community members will then gather in the evening to share and discuss the local food issue.