Week 1: Model and Explanation

These pictures illustrate the way I feel that students learn. I believe that learning has a lot to do with trial and error. Although teachers can give instructions and explain why those directions work best, I think that students actually realize why when they experience for themselves which ways work and which do not. As an example activity that may be used in a kindergarten classroom when learning about shapes, I showed a teacher holding up a board with cut-outs of different types of shapes. After learning about which shape is which, and how many sides each particular shape has, the students would have blocks distributed out to them and they would have to match up which shape belongs in which hole. Instead of memorizing that a triangle has three sides, the children can experience for themselves that the triangle will only fit in the cut-out that has three sides to it. Over the summer I work in a day camp in Chicago and I have had the incredible experience of watching my campers learn through play. I think play is an extremely educational experience and I can definitely see that my campers are using problem solving strategies as part of their everyday lives and they seem to remember these experiences the most. For example, when my kids make arts and crafts projects and they see that there are six hearts to color in on their paper and they have three colors to use on these hearts, they will often explain to me that they are going to use a pattern in their coloring that will allow for the use of all three colors, two times each (in simpler terms of course). Obviously, children need guidance in their learning but I think they can learn an incredible amount from their own trials and errors.