January 27, 2010
This past week in graduate school, I had the assignment to understand the Constuctionism model and I realized some of the strategies are ingrained in my personal teaching strategies with my special education students. I am always prompting my students with questions to have them verbalize their thoughts and ideas. When ever possible I create collaborative projects, so they learn to communicate and work with each other, as well as help each other and lastly, I use assessment tools such as rubrics, journals and feedback through observation of students interaction and participation. The other part of our reading assignment this week was a chapter on “Generating and Testing Hypothesis”.
The chapter contained a fictional lesson created by a fifth grade teacher in which her goal was for her students to learn about saving money and compounding interest. She could have been traditional and used a text book and worksheets. But, she opted to give her students a project based learning experience. She created a scenario in which they inherited $10,000 and had to choose one of three plans. The class was divided into groups of three. Within their group they had to discuss the three plans, strategize on which plan was going to reap the most rewards and then they were given an interactive spreadsheets in which they added data, viewed the financial changes and create charts and/or graphs to explain their findings.
The teacher interacted with the students as their teacher in demonstrating the way to use the spreadsheet and create the charts, but she also supplied information on financial risks before they begin to brainstorm to choose the plan for them. As a facilitator she answered students questions and guided them with prompting and cues so they could answer their own questions.
This week’s lesson gave me the opportunity to understand how project-based lesson strategies are based on Constructivist’s theories on learning.
Reference
Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching and Technology. Section: Construtionism, Learning by Design and Project-Based Learning.
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
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