Edwards Active Learning in the Middle Grades Classroom

1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-56090-286-7
Verlag: Association for Middle Level Education
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

Involve students and they learn. Learning activities that require students to discuss, question, clarify, and apply, help them retain the content we want them to remember. Active Learning approaches-intellectual activity, social activity, and physical activity-help students learn how to ask meaningful questions and become empowered to be lifelong learners. This book lays a foundation for teachers interested in using active learning by -Sharing the framework and rationale for active learning -Providing specific classroom strategies for use in any middle grades classroom. -Helping you overcome barriers to implementing active learning. -Describing the research that supports active learning for 10- to 15-year-olds.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Edwards, Susan

Leseproben

Chapter 2 Intellectually Active Instructional Strategies Nothing saddens me as much as witnessing brilliant young intellects addressing enormous efforts to trivial problems. ~Solomon Snyder What do we mean by intellectually active? More than simply memorizing and regurgitating information, intellectually active students must be thinking at a higher level. Because the information available to us as a society is growing exponentially, it is increasingly important that students have a conceptual understanding of the content they are learning so they can sort, categorize, and prioritize that information. Learning endless facts is less important than understanding the ideas behind those facts. And it is not how much they know, but rather what they can do with that knowledge that matters. It is critical for students to be able to learn on their own and to apply that knowledge in new ways to solve new problems (Wagner, 2012). Brain research shows that when students are faced with unknown problems, their brains attempt to find connections to make sense of the problem. “The more complex the problem, the more complex the brain activity becomes” (Fogarty, 2009, p. 154), and this is when real learning occurs. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a framework that helps us think about this idea. Bloom’s Taxonomy Benjamin Bloom created a framework in 1956 to represent levels of thinking. These six levels of mental skills or abilities were revised in 2001 by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl (see Figure 4). Remember—On this lowest level on Bloom’s Taxonomy, students memorize and recall information previously provided to them. While this does require some cognitive effort, students working at this level are not considered intellectually active. Understand—At this level, students understand concepts and are able to explain those concepts. Students simply understanding a new idea but not doing anything with it is passive rather than active learning. However, if students explain that concept in their own words and demonstrate their understanding, intellectual activity is beginning. Apply—Students apply the concept, knowledge, or idea in a new way at this level, which definitely falls within the realm of intellectually active learning. Analyze—In this level of intellectual activity, students distinguish between the different parts of an idea. Evaluate—Based on knowledge they have learned, students justify a stance or a decision in this level of intellectually active learning. Create—This level of intellectually active learning requires students to create a new product or point of view based on what they have learned. So, activities that require students to perform at the top four levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy are considered intellectually active. Students applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating are definitely engaged in intellectual activity. The second (understanding) level of Bloom’s, is considered intellectually active if students explain what they understand in a new or different way that demonstrates their understanding. To see what this looks like in the classroom, let us take a look into Mrs. Jones’ and Mrs. Craver’s classrooms. Both teachers are teaching eighth grade language arts and are working on gerunds, infinitives, and participles. Getting students to be intellectually active in your classroom requires taking students to a higher level of thinking. Recall and comprehension do not count as being intellectually active. Our goal is for our students to think critically—to engage in analysis, synthesis, and application. To be successful in our changing society, our students need to be prepared to do the hard work of thinking and to engage in problem solving and answering difficult questions. When we talk about intellectually active instructional strategies, the focus should be on the intellectually active part, not the strategy part. Having students complete activities is not the goal. The goal is critical thinking. As with every instructional decision you make in your classroom, the activity should enhance the learning of your content objectives. This chapter describes various strategies to get students intellectually engaged in your content. Any of these strategies can be used to teach different content in various subject areas. Be flexible with the strategies and adapt them to suit your purposes and your style. Students could complete these activities individually, or if you want to intersect with the socially active dimension on the Active Learning Framework, you could have students work collaboratively on these activities. Increasing Depth and Complexity Kaplan’s Depth and Complexity Model (Kaplan & Cannon, 2001) can be a useful tool for adding challenge to tasks by requiring students to be more intellectually active. Consider adding one of the aspects below to a question or prompt that you assign. After exploring resources you provide, students could answer the question in writing, or they could discuss the question in small groups or as a whole class. •Over Time—Ask students to look at relationships between past, present, and future related to a specific concept. •Points of View—Ask students to write from multiple perspectives or opposing viewpoints. •Interdisciplinary Connections—Ask students to discuss relationships across disciplines. •Trends—Ask students to determine factors that influence events or patterns. •Unanswered Questions—Ask students to look at ambiguities or gaps of information in a topic. •Big Ideas—Ask students to make generalizations and to distinguish principles. •Ethics—Ask students to consider controversies related to a concept or to look for bias. Venn Diagrams John Venn proposed the Venn diagram in 1880 (Venn, 1880). The idea is that two circles (or more) overlap with one circle representing all of the possible members (or characteristics) of the set of a given concept and the other circle representing all of the possible members (or characteristics) of the set of another concept. Where the two circles overlap are the members (or characteristics) of both sets. Teachers can incorporate this good tool into any content area by asking students to compare and contrast different concepts related to a given topic. Students can use pencils and do this activity in their notebooks, use chart paper and markers to display their diagrams for the class, or use computers or tablets. Select two or three concepts that can be compared and contrasted. The number of concepts corresponds to the number of circles in the diagram. Explain that the students should think of as many characteristics or ideas related to each of the listed concepts as they can. Have students locate the area where the circles overlap, indicating characteristics that the two concepts have in common. The outer parts of each circle represent the contrasting characteristics unique to each concept. Challenge students to think of characteristics that are more subtle, characteristics that require inferences, or characteristics that are implicit rather than explicit. Practical Suggestions •Two websites with free interactive Venn diagrams are classtools.net and readwritethink.org. •Have small groups make Venn diagrams using two hula hoops and characteristics that are written on cards. •Use an interactive board with characteristics already listed outside of the circles. Students take turns coming to the board and dragging the characteristics to the proper location in the Venn diagram. Allow them to move words already placed by previous students and have discussions about the discrepancies. •For students’ first Venn diagram: First think of one characteristic for each region of the diagram as a class and then have the students continue on their own. Here is an example of a Venn diagram using some of the ideas we learned in Chapter One about active and passive learning: Concept Maps and Graphic Organizers Concept maps and graphic organizers (Novak & Gowin, 1996; Vanides, Yin, Tomita, & Ruiz-Primo, 2005) are visual representations of a topic with bubbles representing different concepts or ideas and lines between the bubbles representing connections among related ideas. Concept maps are graphical tools that organize and structure knowledge and display relationships between terms. They allow students to visualize how individual ideas are part of a larger whole and illuminate...