Knowledge Construction Study Guide

What?

Within Chapter 7, Knowledge Construction jumps into different strategies which are good for student learning. We learn that students come in with different ideas of concepts that come from their prior knowledge and life experience. It’s stressed that as teachers we need to address these different ideas and help students understand that their misconceptions are not adequate. In the chapter they discussed the importance of prototypes and their role in the classroom. Prototypes are good for students to understand the typical example of the concept, but they also need to know that they are NOT the only example. Student’s misconceptions are dangerous and crucial to be cleared; however, there is a special way to go about it. When correcting a student, you don’t want to ruin their self-esteem.

Learning is an active process based on prior knowledge and experience. The more you can personalize the activity the more fun it is for the students; however, you may recieve some misconceptions along the way that you need to be watching out for. There are many different misconceptions that can pop up during teaching but there are a few rules to follow as you correct a students misconceptions. They are as follows:

• Identify existing misconceptions before instruction begins.
• Convince students their beliefs are inadequate.
• Motivate students to know the truth.
• Maintain high self-esteem.
• Monitor what students say and write for persistent misconceptions.

If you follow these simple steps you will find it easier to help students better understand the material.

So What?

I believe that this chapter is an important part of our curriculum because it's crucial to know that students may come into my classroom with preconceived notions about the topics that I cover. i need to be prepared to know the different misconceptions that will arise and then be prepared to help students get over that obstacle. The biggest challenge will be telling the students that they are wrong without killing their self-esteem. This could potentially ruin a teenager if they are humiliated in the classroom. That's why it's so important to understand the steps to get students to look at it from your point of view and almost manipulate them to think that it was their idea that it was wrong. If you word it in a way that they feel like they came up with the correct answer, they will more likely accept it!

Now What?

One way to implement Knowledge Construction in the classroom is by doing the 5 E's activity. Each of the 5 E's describes a phase of learning, and each phase begins with the letter "E": Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. The 5 E's allows students and teachers to experience common activities, to use and build on prior knowledge and experience, to construct meaning, and to continually assess their understanding of a concept.

Engage: This phase of the 5 E's starts the process. An "engage" activity should do the following:

1. Make connections between past and present learning experiences
2. Anticipate activities and focus students' thinking on the learning outcomes of current activities. Students should become mentally engaged in the concept, process, or skill to be learned.

Explore: This phase of the 5 E's provides students with a common base of experiences. They identify and develop concepts, processes, and skills. During this phase, students actively explore their environment or manipulate materials.

Explain: This phase of the 5 E's helps students explain the concepts they have been exploring. They have opportunities to verbalize their conceptual understanding or to demonstrate new skills or behaviors. This phase also provides opportunities for teachers to introduce formal terms, definitions, and explanations for concepts, processes, skills, or behaviors.

Elaborate: This phase of the 5 E's extends students' conceptual understanding and allows them to practice skills and behaviors. Through new experiences, the learners develop deeper and broader understanding of major concepts, obtain more information about areas of interest, and refine their skills.

Evaluate: This phase of the 5 E's encourages learners to assess their understanding and abilities and lets teachers evaluate students' understanding of key concepts and skill development.

To implement this into a history context wouldn't be to hard. Say you were learning about WWII and the Genocide that occurred in Nazi Germany. You could start off by engaging the students in a videos clip that really catches the attentions of the students. Then they can explore the topic using a Web quest provided by the teacher. I made one in my Instructional Media class that would work great. Part of the Web quest would allow students to help explain what finds they have found and ask questions to the teacher. In this particular Web Quest they are asked to create a scrapbook of the different aspects of the holocaust. This is where they could really elaborate and be creative in their research. In groups they would present their scrapbook to the class and I could evaluate their understanding based on the scrapbook and presentation!