LEARNING EXPERIENCES/KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION: My approach to assisting children in exercising critical thinking, communication, and observation skills rests in my role as an information literacy instructor. My primary responsibility is to support and guide teachers and students in the responsible use and acquisition of information. This requires that I promote, foster, and facilitate the various forms of logico-mathematical knowledge. These learning experiences with Ramps & Pathways promote the same thinking that is required for researching and reporting. Logico-mathematical knowledge is intricate to utilize when searching for and utilizing credible information, extracting necessary details, and synthesizing to report, redesign, and discover new information.
ENCOURAGEMENT & STIMULATION: I used various statements and questions to spark the students' thinking and encourage productivity. They are as follows. "This looks interesting. Would you explain to me what you have done? What made you want to move the materials in this way? If this is not giving you the results you want, what should you do? Stop. Look at what you have done. Where are things going differently than you expected? How can you fix that? What do you need to attain the desired results? Repeating the same process over and over again is not getting you what you want. So, what should you do first? Wow! What have you done here? Explain what you have built. Why did you choose to build it this way? Was their any other way that you could have accomplished the goal? If this is not rolling back here, why is rolling back here? What is different here than down here? What is making the ball roll in the opposite direction? How are you going to get the ball to continue to roll through the maze of books. Where is the speed/momentum coming from? Using the pathways, show me a turn; show me a bend; show me a curve. This is nice. I see you thinking. Let me see more thinking. What else can you do to be successful here?"
QUESTIONS & EXPERIMENTATION: I responded appropriately and matter-of-factually when interacting with my students. They did not like the responses I provided in most instances. They wanted me to give them explicit and direct answers to their inquiries. In this way, I think they were disappointed with me. I may have been a bit too encouraging at other times according to Kamii's principles of teaching. I gave encouragement in terms of "Great! That looks good. You did it." I think I may have done so because the process was difficult and dubious for the students sometimes. I also recognized that I was irritated often at times. This was usually provoked by the students' unwillingness to persevere and capitalize on the prompting I provided.
CHANGES & ENHANCEMENTS: This project was originally created for early learners but because of various schedule and working constraints, I carried out this project with secondary students. This variation required that I make changes and enhancements to the original project entirely. Further changes I could have made were to: (1) have the students assign themselves a role during each construction, (2) draft designs for each construction, and (3) further limit the horizontal space the students were allowed to work within.
LEARNING GOALS MET: The learning goal for this project were met as it was to explore the physical knowledge and logico-mathematical knowledge in children. This goal was fully met as the presumptions I had about how our students were accustomed to learning were solidified. It appears that our students are taught most concepts not through thinking-relationships and discovery (logico-mathematical knowledge)-but through identification (social knowledge).
QUESTIONS & ISSUES: The students I worked with lacked serious fortitude, perseverance, and grit in the area of critical thinking. There were moments that this was painful for the students. This was observed at various intervals during most of the sessions. Two of the three students actually cried during two separate sessions. They just were unwilling to take the time and effort needed to think their way through the problems with their construction designs. I believe this unwillingness comes from a lack of practice and
conditioning which has led to low fortitude resulting in an inability to genuinely and authentically learn. For these students, learning is short term. It consists of memorization techniques and quick assessments. It is also very fragile especially when related to self-worth and one's sense of identity.
No comments:
Post a Comment