Something I learned while teaching middle school was that much of the lesson planning time needs to go to developing "buy in." The particular challenge in a classroom setting is that universal buy in is hard, though it is possible to engage several to most students in a given activity. Two approaches that worked were to first think in terms of whether students would want to take the lesson home (NOT homework), and then to think about how students can change or interact with the activity. I will post some examples when I get home.

Hmm... I am not seing it up yet on my fellowship program website, (http://www.gk12.iastate.edu/classroom_projects/lesson_plans.asp), but fortunately they gave me permission to host this one publicly (file attached).

I'm putting this one up not because of the content, so much as this one got enough interest form students that they started trying to power things around the house with no homework or prompting. This can then be used to feed into after-school clubs or similar activities. In my opinion, I think that sometimes we do not have a broad enough view when it comes to thinking about where education takes place.

Dear Michael, thanks for your contribution and answer.

We need to teach students how think critically, dear Bahram, and how to learn efficiently! Most students know that 3x2=6 because they memorize it as such, but they do not know the mathematical concept or function that what this means is the mathematical FACT that 3 is repeated twice--so they do not have to memorize, but learn!

In  African language studies , especially swahili, the heuristic method is best against with complex morphologies, and the applied Heuristic to English as well as Swahili for English works well.

This answer is dedicated to my African friends ... nakupenda 

http://hum.uchicago.edu/jagoldsm/Papers/SED2_Final.pdf

Last week during a lecture in industrial chemistry, I told the 4th year students that basic research may be done to find an answer to a simple question such as (why milk is usually white in color). Some students asked: What is the answer of this question? My reply was : I shall not tell you. Go & find the answer in the library or the internet. I am strongly against spoon-feeding in education. Let the students learn by themselves but be ready, as a teacher, to give help if there is real difficulty,

Spoon-feeding does not raise the level of thinking, neither build characters of the personality, while learning the know how to think and create helps students in their lives.

"Students autonomy is the single biggest value that can be developed; academics should not view students as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge." - Peter Ovens, senior research fellow!

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/418217.article

Heuristic teaching method was originated by Socrates who initiated the teaching as, “Teachers ask, students answer”.  Heuristic teaching method is one of the most effective methods, which proved and showed improvement in the efficiency of teaching.

Heuristic play is a term used to refer to the kind of games that encourage active exploration through the use of children's senses. The child instinctively seeks to investigate objects, which interest him or her, and makes discoveries via taste, touch, smell and sound.

http://www.nurturedathome.co.nz/heuristic-play

To create Heuristic Learning facilities

Heuristic Learning facilities have a lot of advantage but in the days when education is treated as a business, the economics also to be looked into for practical implementations. Un-capacitated facility location is one of the most extensively investigated facility location problems. The input consists of a set of facilities F, a set of clients C , and distance  metric between them. The input also consists of facility  cost for each facility in F . Goal is to open facilities such that sum of facility cost and service cost is minimized for sustainability.

http://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/~pandit/thesis.pdf