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         Learner responsiveness is the act of responding appropriately to student’s responses and outside circumstances.  Learner responsiveness is being able to engage, challenge, and relate content to students. Another part of learner responsiveness is building and maintaining rapport with students, so they feel encouraged to thrive within the classroom.

            I believe learner responsiveness is vital in the classroom as students need a responsive teacher, so they can learn to the best of their ability. As a learner responsive teacher, I maintain flexibility to adapt my lessons to the response of my students. One way I do this is when I teach Science. My students love science! However, the curriculum given gives the students a lot of answers which causes them to become disengaged. Therefore, I have adapted this curriculum to be more inquiry based and students led. One lesson I did this with is when we were discussing how energy makes things move. Students were to build a boat following a step-by-step how to guide. However, I thought I would put an engineering spin on the lesson and have students design and build their own boats given a limited amount of materials. I have never seen my students work as hard as they did during this lesson. I also gave them the freedom to collaborate with other students or work alone.

            Another way I demonstrate learner responsiveness is when my students found a deep interest in origami in Art. I had a student who was disengaged with class and barely turned in work until, I allowed students to turn in their work in origami form. This disengaged student has turned in their work ever since!

            The most important aspect of learner responsiveness to me is building and maintaining rapport. Once this rapport is established it becomes easier to be responsive to each individual needs and circumstances! One way I establish rapport with my students is by checking in on each one of them every morning during breakfast. I also take time from instruction to have a morning and afternoon meeting during these we greet each other, share personal information, and play team building games. This helps with rapport because it helps maintain our relationship.