The Art & Science of Teaching, Chapter 2: What will I do to help students effectively interact with knowledge?
Posted on: October 7, 2011
Simple question this time! I am going to guide my students and help them learn. As a teacher with many second language learners many strategies have been incorporated into my classroom for years. Below are strategies I have routinely used in my technology classroom are:
- Pictures and diagrams explaining what they have learned
- Providing students with questions that require elaboration and possibly an on-line investigation
- Chunking new information in small bits
- Making connections with previous knowledge
- Graphic organizers
- Interactive activities rather than “telling”
I have left one off my list since I am still developing activities in my classroom based on cooperative learning, no not group work but true cooperative learning. Earlier this year I attended a Kagan training, I have since had a chance to incorporate a few of their structures into my classroom, and the students love them. A structure is a procedure with rules on how students are to interact and share knowledge, develop ideas and possibly report a conclusion. I can know hear from many students instead of just asking one student a question and they have the opportunity to explain and elaborate their responses to each other as well as question. They are becoming THINKERS rather than parrots.
It is vital that all of my student’s knowledge building experiences support their learning goals, which means my goals and formative assessments must be developed before I begin the task of guiding my students down the new path of knowledge building. I guess I am like an architect; my blue prints (plans) must be clear before I can begin to construct knowledge within my students.
Do you have information to add, don’t be shy. Type away, we all learn by sharing.
3 Responses to "The Art & Science of Teaching, Chapter 2: What will I do to help students effectively interact with knowledge?"
October 18, 2011 at 4:53 PM
It’s interesting when we’re trying to teach students to expand their thinking by giving them exploratory-type assignments and tasks rather than ‘copy this answer’ how many students actually are confused by the idea that they should be expanding their thinking. The process of getting to where students have the capability to go beyond and elaborate can sometimes be a labour-intensive one. I love how you incorporated the ‘formative assessment’ there – to me, that’s absolutely key in getting students to that constructing stage of knowledge acquisition. If you don’t make sure that students look back and ask themselves ‘what have I learned today and how can that change what I do tomorrow?’, you’ll never get anywhere with this collective construction of meaning.
February 11, 2012 at 6:58 PM
Asking the students questions about the new concepts then giving then time to respond is one thing that i do before the new concept in introduce. I also encourage the students to respond by highlighting only the positing aspects of their response.
Teach on the Edge 
October 9, 2011 at 1:19 AM
To know and inform our students what the assessments and standards are, increase our expectations from our students. If they know what is expected they will meet the challenge. In place of testing to see what they don’t know.