Cooperative Learning and Constructivism

In this week’s module, we read and discussed a lot of the strategies that many teachers are relying on in the classroom today. We are emphasizing cooperative learning because we know that practice will help the students learn how to work with others. The career field is looking for future employees that can work with others well, so we want our students to be able to do this. Group projects are a huge part of cooperative learning and I personally like to use them in class often. I think they are a great way for students to set their own goals and objectives and figure out a way to meet them. This helps the students become more independent and able to work on projects without the always present oversight of the teacher.

Constructivism is a very modern approach to education. Many older teachers that I know have a big problem with this method because they feel that it takes too long, and would limit the amount of material that we can cover in a year even more than it already is. They also feel that there is too much of a chance that the students could understand the concepts incorrectly, misinterpret how they can be used, or use them incorrectly out of context. Constructivism is a new concept, and very different from direct instruction. I think it is a powerful tool that we can use, because students are building their own knowledge in their own words. Each student will own the knowledge themselves, rather than feel like they are absorbing the knowledge of others.

Search for Meaning- European Educational Ideas

The two ideas the really struck me in Ellis’s lecture this week were ideas about constructivism and student independence. The first idea, that “things and objects and so on should be studied before abstract rules are studied” (Ellis, slide 9) made me think of the constructivist view that our schools are pushing towards now. We encourage students to build their knowledge from discovery activities and we use inquiry strategies to help the students discover knowledge on their own. We use inquiry activities a lot in my biology classroom.  We had the students complete an activity in the beginning of the year where they classified different household objects, such as toothpicks, rubberbands, pieces of cloth, and metal pins. This idea was to get them familiar with the idea of classifying different objects so that they would be comfortable when we started classifying organisms. This led to the second idea that struck me in the reading, “that students should be more dependant upon their own investigations than upon authority” (Ellis, slide 11). This idea is also just becoming widely used in the classroom, getting students to take responsibility for their learning. We want the students to discover their knowledge, rather than just having us tell them what concepts they need to understand. In my biology class, my students inspected plant and animal cells to discover the differences between them, rather than just telling them what the differences were. I think both of these ideas are very important to American education today, and it is very interesting that they come from Europe.

Observations

These past two weeks, I have had my principal and both vice principals observe my classrooms. I decided to have each administrator observe a different classroom. All the observations went fairly well, despite some students behavior issues. I was very happy to hear the positive things they had to say, as well as get feedback from them. As I have heard from my mentor, I need to work on my classroom management. The administrators gave me great advice on certain situations they saw to help control students’ behavior. They all said that I had great rapport with the students and they all seemed to respect me, even when students were giving me a hard time. One of the vice principals really liked my enthusiasm and how confident the students were to raise their hand, volunteer answers and ask questions. I even used some of the comments the vice principal gave to me about technology management in my observation with the principal and I think it made things go smoother, and showed what I expected from my students. The other vice principal commented on how great my questioning technique was, which is something I have been working on since the beginning of the year. I was really glad that everyone thought I did a great job, and that I have seen an improvement in my own teaching since the beginning of the year.

ActivVotes

I have started using ActivVotes in both my chemistry and biology classes and I absolutely love them! They are a great tool to get students to participate in class practice problems. They can be made anonymous or linked to a specific person, so students do not have to be afraid of being singled out with the incorrect answer. You can save the results of the quiz directly into your flipchart (ActivStudio or ActivInspire technology, which is linked with a SmartBoard) or power point so that you can keep the results, as a bar graph, for yourself or as a motivator for your students. I think the students really like to use them, even though they are completing the same types of problems that they would be if I had them complete the practice problems on paper. In addition, you can export the flipchart with the saved results to a jpg or pdf or a word doc. They show up as pictures, so it is necessary to adjust you formatting if you want to see the original question beneath your saved results graph. Below I linked some examples of questions I asked (and the students’ responses):

Biology: 5, 6, 7, 8

Why I teach…

Today was one of those days that I live to teach for (5th period anyway). I came in a little upset because of previous classes and a couple of my students noticed. I was smiling within 5 mintues of just chatting with my students. Right now we are in the middle of cell reproduction. We have just finished mitosis, and are working on learning about karyotypes as an introduction to meiosis.

Yesterday, we started off with a short multiple choice question review on chromosome structure using the active voters (small remotes that have multiple choice answers so students can answer questions from their desks and feedback can be immediate). It was the first time we had used them, and the students were very excited. I was able to see immediately the the class remembered everything about chromosome structure. We then discussed the different types of chromosomes (autosomes and sex chromosomes) and the different types of cells (somatic cells (all cells in your body except sex cells) and sex cells (eggs and sperm)). The students were asking lots of great questions and we did not get through very much material because they were asking such great questions. At the end of the period, I had them write a “clear/ unclear” statement, which was also a first for this class. I have had them write summaries before, and answer specific questions, but I have never asked them to write about what confused them. This was extremely beneficial because I could see exactly what I needed to re-address, or what I needed to go over. I also had some students ask great questions in addition to explaining what they didn’t understand, most of which will be answered once we start meiosis on monday . Examples of students responses will be posted soon.

Today, I used the warm up to start a conversation about the concepts covered the day before. I included a visualization activity in which the students were asked to close their eyes and think about the chromosomes in different parts of their body, so they would get an idea about how many chromosomes they have in their entire bodies. It was great because I got a lot of students saying “ooh!” because they get what they did not understand the day before. Then, we talked about karyotypes, both what they are, how they are put together, and what they are supposed to look like. Again, the students asked great questions and starting great discussions. Finally, we talked about chromosomal disorders, issues with the number of chromosomes people can have, using karyotypes of specific disorders. The students were so interested in the different disorders that as soon as I put up a picture of a new karyotype, they immediately wanted to know the symptoms, and would barely let me describe the chromosomes before berating me with questions about the symptoms, even though I was about to list them. The questions the students were asking were so great. As we were talking about disorders, I breifly introduced meiosis, just to get the students thinking about how you inherit each chromosome. One student had a great “aha!” moment. She asked “so is that why pregnancy takes 9 months? Because the baby starts out as one cell, then divides exponentially? Like it starts out as one cell, then becomes two, then becomes four, then becomes eight and so on?” I said yep, and she exclaimed, “ooh! that is so cool!” Then the girl behind her says, “This stuff is so interesting! No offense, but I wasn’t so interested in previous units, but this unit is so cool. Well last unit (mitosis and DNA) was cool too, but this is really interesting!” The last thing we did was use the active voters to see of the students understood how the karyotypes showed disorders. From the few slides we got through, it was very obvious that the students really grasped the concepts. Today was one of those days that I live for. My students all were super interested in the material, and they made me feel like I was really doing a great job teaching them to love biology.

Learning centers modified for High School Classrooms

In the reading this week, I was very intrigued by the idea of learning centers. When reading the story about Ms Matthews and Antonio, I envisioned my fourth grade class, which had a reading corner, and thought about one corner of the classroom being dedicated to resources. I could not imagine what it would be like in a junior high or high school classroom. Especially with the classrooms I’m in this year, it would be hard to set something like that up. I am in three classrooms (only because I have two mentors, each of them is in two rooms) and in each of those classrooms, there are at least two teachers.  Sharing rooms make things much more complicated than they would be in an elementary school, especially because the classrooms are crowded enough as it is. The reading suggests that these centers contain references that apply to the lessons so that students can go back and help themselves if they are confused and extra practice or independent research to help the student understand the material (Curtin, 2009, p. 109). My mentor puts up extra practice on his website, but it might be good to start an extra spot on the site for those who need extra help. Maybe have an alternate explanation, from the book or another resource. I could also include some sort of discussion board, so that the students could ask questions, and even help each other at night, or when I am not available to help. Because it is the website, I could add links to good resource websites that have extra practice, or games to help the students when they do not understand. I could use this in chemistry right now because my students are having a lot of trouble with limiting reactants, and my explanations are not reaching all of the students. I could add some alternate explanations and resources onto the website, which may help the students understand the material much better than they are in class.

Reference:

Curtin, E. M. (2009). Practical strategies for teaching English language learners. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson.

Discovery learning

In this module, I learned that education is moving towards the active student, rather than the passive student. The passive student “sits in his or her seat [and] listens to what the teacher has to say, who follows the prescribed curriculum, who turns in the assignments, takes the exams, receives the grade, and moves on to the next level”(Ellis). This classroom would have mostly direct instruction, and little constructivism or inquiry. In classrooms with active students, there is more student-student questioning and hands-on work in which the students are working together to figure something out. I learned that this idea of the active student increases the amount of knowledge the student gains by discovery, rather than by receiving it from someone else. Students internalize knowledge gained by discovery, and the idea of the active student puts the pressure on the student to learn, rather than the teacher to force the information into the student.

Small group work

Small group work is great for teaching between students. Students can explain concepts to each other and often the students who did not understand to begin with get a different perspective and the content mzakes more sense to them. The students who understood the content before the group work can internalize the material by teaching it to other students. However, there is always the danger of a couple students doing all the work, while the others just slide through without learning anything, or doing any work. Without self evaluation, there is no sure way to tell which students are actually learning and working, especially when the project contains work outside of class. I think small group work is valuable because the students can learn how to work with different types of students, which will be valuable to their futures

Standard V Project

I completed a project for EDU 6613 that required an assessment, teaching to help students master the material, then another assessment on the same material. I learned a lot from this experience, and I am looking forward to using this strategy in my future teaching, especially because I can have students share their strategies for solving prolems with other students, because I find that studentss with a system tend to perform better on exams. My completed project can be accessed through the link below.

Standard V Project

Oral quizzes

In my biology classes, we have been studying the history of DNA, its structure and how it replicates. In order to help the students learn the material, we had them build models out of pasta and pipe cleaners. In pairs, they followed the instructions to make a model of one DNA molecule, and answered written questions about what they did. After they finished, I asked each pair questions about their molecule, asking them to show mastery of their knowledge of the structure of DNA. The students had to answer every question correctly in order to be checked off. If they did not, they were sent back to study, and they had to sign up again. The quiz was out of 5 points, and the students lost one point for every time they were sent back to their desks. We did a similar activity for DNA replication, having them model it, and then answer a second set of oral questions, with them same rules. As much as the students complained when they were not checked off the first time, I had several students tell me that the activity really helped them learn the material. We took the bigger written quiz (which included DNA history, as well as structure and replication) on thursday/friday (depending on the period) and some students have done much better on this written test than they have done on other tests.