Improving Student Thinking and Learning

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Improving Student Thinking and Learning With
Databases
Roberta Niche, McKinney ISD
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How Students Learn
Seeking Patterns
Making Connections
Bunching Facts
Concepts
Thinking Skills
Problem Solving
Concept Formation
Database
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Why is this stuff important?
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For much of the twentieth century, teachers
sought to teach discreet facts. Now it is
essential to seek ways of teaching children how
to think, how to process information from many
points of view, and how to solve problems. The
sheer volume of information and the wide
accessibility to the Internet make mere knowledge
acquisition of secondary value.
Dr. Terry Armstrong, Idaho Virtual Campus
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Some things we know about
How Students Learn
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• The brain is wired to to look for patterns and
  connections
• Learning centered around broad concepts and big
  questions is more likely to be effective than
  learning based on recall of facts
• Constructivism Learners construct their own
  knowledge by plugging new information into their
  existing frame of reference.

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Patterns and Connections
We know from brain research that students need
to see patterns and connections. And if they have
no way to make sense of this massive amount of
information that's coming at them, they tend to
get confused. It just becomes traipsing over
trivia. Lynn Erickson, Curriculum consultant
and author of Concept-Based Curriculum and
Instruction Teaching Beyond the Facts
Lynn Erickson
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My Mistake

• Memorize the names of the Pharaohs of ancient
  Egypt (in order).
• Why do great civilizations like Ancient Egypt
  fail?

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A little example
of how the brain strives to find connections
between facts and how it tries to plug those
facts into concepts.
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Read these animals names. You have one minute to
memorize as many as possible.
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Write down the names of as many animals as you
can remember.
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How many did you remember?
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What if youd put animals into groups before you
tried to memorize them?
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Students who have not been taught how to think
often read text from start to end, never making
connections or chunking (classifying)
information. When they get to the end, they
remember little and understand less.
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Concepts
Our brains are constantly seeking patterns and
connections. By bunching facts into categories or
organizing them around concepts, the brain can
make its own sense out of information and begin
to understand it. Therefore, to help students see
connections and make sense of the curriculum, it
should be organized around concepts and
principles. http//www.ascd.org/pdi/demo/diffin
str/differentiated2.html
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• For Example
• Concepts in geography would include
• Location
• Place
• Human/environment interaction
• Movement
• Regions

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Old Way Write a report about Arizona. Include
the state bird, the state song, and the state
flag. Tell when it was founded and list five
important facts in its history. List its main
natural resources, agricultural products, and
manufacturing.
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Better Way Investigate the Southwest Region of
the United States.Work with your team to decide
where in this region your family should
relocate. You will want to consider crime rates,
quality of schools, cost of living, amount of
pollution, availability of quality health care,
entertainment,
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What's better about it?

• Collaborative
• HOTS
• Authentic in purpose
• Teaches a thinking process, a way of looking at
  and evaluating information. Students can use this
  same process in other contexts to learn other
  information.

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Jerome Bruner recognizes the futility of knowing
everything but insists that we should all learn a
rich conceptual framework. While it may be
impossible to know the dates attendant to all of
the world's great revolutions, we should know the
underlying ideas that foment such revolutions.
Bruner emphasizes concept attainment to allow
students to first see the big picture. Dr.
Terry Armstrong http//ivc.uidaho.edu/mod/models/
bruner/
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Constructivism

• Learners
• Actively construct their knowledge.
• Dont simply absorb ideas spoken at them by
  teachers, or internalize them by rote drill and
  practice
• Create new knowledge by assimilating new
  information with pre-existing ideas, and
  modifying their understanding when they get new
  new data.

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• Lets see these ideas in action!
• Concept Formation Teaching Strategies
• The Animals Project
• The Presidents Project

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• Basic Concept Formation Strategy
• What did you see? What did you hear? What comes
  to mind (Teacher lists items on the chalkboard.)
  
• What things belong together? (Students begin to
  group items by identifying common properties.)
• What would you call these groups? (Students give
  labels or names to grouped items. This is
  categorizing.)

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Meta-cognitive Objective(Thinking about their
thinking) Students will reflect upon their
thinking processes when using this skill and
examine its effectiveness.
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Look at your white covered handout, page
titled Thinking About Animals
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Look at your white covered handout, page
titled Thinking About Presidents
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Database A great tool for students to use to
make sense of this information.
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What is a database?

• Program to organize and store data
• -example contact information
• Can
• find patterns in data
• view data various ways
• filter and sort data
• explore and analyze problems
• Microsoft Works, Excel, Access

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Why Use Databases With Students?
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• Allow students to
• Organize data
• Categorize
• See relationships between categories
• Explore problems
• Formulate hypotheses
• Compare and contrast
• Make inferences

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Listing Grouping Labeling Categorizing Sorting S
ifting Classifying Graphing Compare/Contrast Alike
and Different Cause/Effect
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Lets play with a Database!
Open the practice database from the session web
page
Smokers The Practice Database
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Group Project Time
Upper grade project gold handout Primary grade
project pink handout Everyone will -Do some
research on the Internet -Open his/her
template -Enter information in the database -Ask
and answer questions -Groups Report Out
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Groups Report Out
Questions you asked and answered Graphs made (if
had time) Questions for me
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The End