The search for understanding motivates students to learn found that,
when students want to know more about an idea, a topic, or an entire
decipline, they put more cognitive energyinto classroom investigations
and discussions and study more on their own.
Brooks
$ Brooks identified five centeral tenets of constructivism that
can be answered to the guiding questions for application in the classroom.
1. How might students entry points be identified?
Constructivist teachers seek and value students' points of view. Knowing
what students think about concepts helps teachers formulate classroom
lessons and differentiate instruction on the basis of students' needs
and interests.
2. What is involved in structuring the experiences that will build
bridges from present understanding to new undrstanding?
Constructivist teachers structure lessons to challenge students' suppositions.
All students, weather the are 5 or 50, come to the classroom with life
experiences that shape their views about how their world works.When
educators permit students to construct nowledge that challenges their
current suppositions, learning occurs. Only through asking students
what they think they know,and why they think they know it, the teachers
and the students are able to confort their suppositions.
3. How might the selection of projects pose questions that relate
to students' real-life experiences?
Constructivist teachers recognize that students must attach relevance
to the curriculum. As students see relevance in their daily activities,
their interst in learning grows.
4. What are the major concepts that students should understand?
Constructivist teachers structure lessons around big ideas, not small
bits of informatioin. Exposing students to wholes first helps them determine
the relevants parts as they refine their understandung of the wholes.
(Top-Down teaching strategy)
5. How might we move from right/wrong to monitoring students' understanding?
Constructivist teachers assess student learning in the context of daily
classroom investigations, not as separate events.Students demonstrate
their knowledge every day in a variety of ways. Defining understanding
as only that which is capable of being measured by paper-and-pencil
assessments administreted under strict security perpetuates false and
counterproductive myths about academia, intelligence, creativity, accountability,
and knowledge.
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