BIG IDEA: Students will first learn about a particular subject from a lecture by the teacher. The lecture should be clear and concise. It should also help keep the students attention throughout the lecture. The lesson should then go into an activity that is group based. This activity should be clearly outlined by the teacher and each group should have students of all developmental levels. After the group activity the student should explore the subject on their own through another teacher guided activity.
ACTIVITY: Before the lecture the teacher should understand and be aware of each students capability for the subject. The teacher will provide a lecture on fractions. The lecture will be clear and concise. The students will then do an activity using legos to make fractions and record on a worksheet that will guide them through the activity and they will record the process that they go through. This activity will be done with a group. After the group activity students will then do a similar activity on their own.
REASONING: Both Piaget and Vygotsky discussed the importance of knowing the ability of the students before the lesson starts. Also, each student has their own social contexts of what they are learning and their own developmental abilities. With the lecture the students first get being clear and concise the students have an ability to take in the information. Knowing the students capabilities the teacher should place students with different backgrounds and developmental abilities together in order to enhance the children's learning. The students can offer different perspectives of the assignment that the teacher may not be able to. This is actually something that I observed this week while at my field experience. The teacher was very creative with her placement of the students and had each group of students with different levels of ability. I could really see the students helping each other learn through their own experiences and knowledge. After having the time with the other students it is important to continue the exploration of the content. In module 7 it discussed again how repetition is crucial to learning and that individual exploration is just as important as group work. By having the students do a similar activity by themselves this would show the instructor if they really did learn from the group activity or just relied on the other students.
This is an excellent model for learning. I think you incorporated the readings into your idea in a great way. I think one thing that you could expound more on would have been how a teacher can assess a student’s prior knowledge or development level. Module 7 discussed "dynamic testing" explaining that this may not just discover what they already know but what they have potential to achieve (EdPsych, Module 7, Page 128-129). Also I liked how you said that your teacher was smart in the way she placed students in their groups because “Vygotsky was not only interested in what more knowledgeable others brought to the interaction, but also in what the child himself or herself brought to the interaction” (Sociocultural Theory, www.education.com). I am curious to hear about how you thought grasped the concept that they were learning after being put into different groups and completing the activities.
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