Weekly Web Wonder #6 - Looking at Problem Solving Approaches

I close my eyes and imagine myself back in 10th grade in my English class, biology class and health science classroom. Thinking about those classes, I can easily pick out which two were my favorites, the english and biology classes. I remember sitting in the middle of my classrooms and being fed information. Some days in English it was through reading and acting out what we had read and meaningful discussions. In biology we would have a problem where there were several steps to complete it and solve it, and then apply it to a lab experiment with my group. Health class was a little different. Our teacher would lecture us for the entire block period, or we would watch a movie and fill out a worksheet to show that we were paying attention. Unfortunately, I don't remember much from health class. I never saw the importance of it other than to show my teacher I could get a good grade.

I read a few articles for todays blog post, but one that caught my attention was a article called Main Course, Not Dessert written by John Larmer and John Mergendoller. Through their article, they give a story as to how a student convinced other students about a specific country and the attractions it had other than the history and the jungle. In the story, the students were passionate and truly interested in what they were learning and discovering. I have had my fair share of projects that I did just to complete them and get a grade, but after reading a few articles, I can't wait to add purpose to my classroom and students. I will strive to make my classroom projects into project based learning. I want students to gain knowledge they will retain and share. One way I plan on doing this, is have students inform others about what they learned, why it is important, and what they had gained. Learning is more enjoyable, when you can also teach others. It brings people together.

Image found from:http://idbyid.blogspot.com/2011/01/chunking-principle.html

When creating knowledge and teaching my students, it is important for me to know what levels of knowledge there are. There are three declarative knowledge types, which include facts, concepts and principles. The facts are at the lower part of the spectrum. This is just a student knowing a simple fact. This just involves memorization. It can be as simple as knowing Valentine's Day is February 14th. The next level up is concepts. Concepts include knowing multiple and being able to name off a few examples. An example of this would be naming holidays that people celebrate in the United States. These examples include Valentine's Day, Christmas, St. Patricks Day and Halloween, just to name a few. Moving on we go to the principles. Principles explain the 'knowing why' something happens. This could include why we celebrate Thanksgiving and how it starts many years ago. Learning about all of these concepts really make me want to dig deeper in my classroom and have my students at the level of using principles. Although I know we can't just start at principles, so it will be a learning process for all of us!


References:

Kirkley, J. (n.d.). Principles for Teaching Problem Solving. Retrieved October 2, 2016, from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.117.8503&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Main Course Not Dessert (by BIE) | Project Based Learning | BIE. (n.d.). Retrieved October 02, 2016, from http://www.bie.org/object/document/main_course_not_dessert#