According to Wiki, Constructivism can be described as a theory that deals with the way people create meaning of the world through a series of individual constructs. Constructs are the different types of filters we choose to place over our realities to change our reality from chaos to order. Von Glasersfeld describes constructivism as, “a theory of knowledge with roots in philosophy, psychology, and cybernetics” (p 162). [1] Simply stated, it is a learning process which allows a student to experience an environment first-hand, thereby, giving the student reliable, trust-worthy knowledge. The student is required to act upon the environment to both acquire and test new knowledge.
As we discussed in class, students are in charge of their own pace of learning. There are two parts of Constructivism; Social and Cognitive. Social is the background and social experiences used to connect the student to the content, language use is a tool used to make sense of the world in order to guide the cognitive abilities and Zone of Proximal Development which is the guide that shows us where the student is sitting with needing help and working individually. The stages of the ZPD are Frustration, Instruction and Independent. The top of the chart, Frustration, is the point where the student does not understand and is developmentally not ready for this information. The Instruction level is where the teacher is is guiding the student and teaching them what needs to be learned. The independent stage is where we want students to be because then they can complete their own learning and on the own pace.
Some pedagogical approaches we discussed were lit circles, guided reading, class discussions, writer's workshop, readers workshop, and Anchored Instruction. During Anchored Instruction, students acquire knowledge through use in contextual problem solving situations rather than through presentation of isolated facts. This is comparable to Project-Based learning. I have had the opportunity to participate in this type of learning, during student teaching.
A great example of this type of learning is a student centered literature unit. We looked through student examples and I will definitely try to use this in my classroom. Also, the Wandering Willie project was a fun idea! :) We used a fun program called TitanPad where groups of students could create a story together, using different computers. The teacher and students could see who wrote what because everyone had a different color. I would do this activity in my classroom. I think the students would have fun!
I also really enjoyed looking through those student examples of the PowerPoints and the student-made literature units-wow! The TitanPad activity was really cool, too, and I would love to use that in my classroom! It's a great way for students to collaborate and they are able to do it pretty much in real time, which is great. I love that you can instantly see who has contributed what and that the teacher can see the revisions and keep track of some management issues that way.
ReplyDeleteI, too, really enjoyed looking at the "Unsolved Mysteries." I loved the idea that students got to form their own opinion. A lot of the time we just have students do research projects and don't get the opportunity to express their own view. So I thought this was a very clever way to do so. I also loved the activity we did to go along with this, Wandering Willie. I'm the type of person that loves puzzle, brain busters, or any type of logic game, so this was perfect for me, besides the drawing part. I think students would love doing an activity similar to that. The only thing is I'm not quite sure how to fit it into the curriculum. I could, however, see it being used during different unit themes. For instance, Wandering Willie could be done during a unit on U.S. history. I'd like to see if I could find any other activities similar to this one out there.
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