Teaching Strategies: Nelson Chapter 6

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Teaching Strategies Nelson Chapter 6

• EDEL 4109 Humanities methods
• 3/6/06 Part one
• Coming soon Part two- groups 5 6, group 1 2

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Introduction

• Teachers become predictable to students before
  they realize it. Although many students
  particularly young ones, need structure, that
  does not mean a dull sameness day after day
  surprising students with an unexpected activity
  can reap rewards. Teachers should have a
  direction in mind, however, before they abandon
  their initial direction in mid-lesson p. 159

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Strategies from Nelson

• Inquiry-
• divergent process,
• the teacher is the resource
• But students are allowed to draw their own
  conclusions
• Outcome can not be predicted- because it depends
  on students responses.

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Inquiry continued

• Before using this strategy it is important to
  know your students- what do they know, their
  environment etc.
• The teachers must have certain content knowledge
  (know the subject).
• Goals of inquiry
• Foster divergent thinking- leads to a variety of
  answers-some which might not be anticipated

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Process of inquiry

• Defining the problem or question
• Developing tentative answer-hypothesis
• Testing the answer
• Developing conclusion
• Applying the conclusion
• Nelson p. 162
• Using puzzles can be helpful in this area
• Example lesson Teaching the decision making
  process
• What are the steps?

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Teachers role

• Have prerequisite knowledge (knowledge of the
  subject)
• What sources do teachers have to gather subject
  knowledge?
• What shapes general knowledge?
• Media (TV, Radio, papers etc)
• Our interactions with family community
• Society expectations
• The teacher should guide students in formulating
  questions- see p. 165 Nelson.

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Application- Inquiry

• Teachers can use available kits
• Make their own kits
• Have students develop kits
• Example- p. 167-168 Nelson
• Using the information in Nelson-
• Practice
• Use Casper maps
• In groups of 3 develop a kit on Important
  things in the city of casper
• When done- trade with another group- decode

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Concept- Guided Discovery

• Concept formation provides students with an
  opportunity to explore ideas by making
  connections and seeing relationships between
  items of information.
• students develop and refine their ability to
  recall and discriminate among key ideas, to see
  commonalities and identify relationships, to
  formulate concepts and generalizations, to
  explain how they have organized data, and to
  present evidence to support their organization of
  the data involved.
• Example teach a concept, then ask students to
  match with" yes/No for what applies to that
  concept example rubric was given in class.

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Concept formation..

• What is its purpose?
• In this instructional method, students are
  provided with data about a particular concept.
  These data may be generated by the teacher or by
  the students themselves. Students are encouraged
  to classify or group the information and to give
  descriptive labels to their groupings. By linking
  the examples to the labels and by explaining
  their reasoning, the students form their own
  understanding of the concept.
• Concept formation lessons can be highly
  motivational because students are provided with
  an opportunity to participate actively in their
  own learning. In addition, the thinking process
  involved helps them create new and expanded
  meaning of the world around them as they organize
  and manipulate information from other lessons and
  contexts in new ways.

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Steps for concept formation

• Set up
• Give the students a number of materials. These
  might be written, they might be "thoughts" (tell
  them to think of different animals for example),
  or they might be real things Work with real
  things.
• classify the materials in a way that makes
  sense. Tell them to focus on a particular area if
  need be.
• You might or might not have activities for the
  students to do with the materials so the students
  will study them in different ways. If you want
  them to focus on the results of these activities
  for forming their concepts, you will ask them to
  focus on these results.
• You will probably put your students into small
  groups. Choose groups so they will work
  effectively together.
• If you wish to minimize your supervisory role,
  choose materials that are relatively safe to work
  with.

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Steps for concept formation continued

• Carry out
• The students study the materials and organize
  them according to some sort of rationale. They
  make their rationale explicit to their peers.
  Their rationales could be considered hypotheses
  for why some materials belong together and others
  do not.
• The teacher's role at this stage is to meander
  through the classroom, observing the students at
  work. You will act as referee and coach. If
  students are hesitant about "taking initiative",
  or if they are not testing the materials in a way
  in which they could, you might encourage them to
  go on with more tests.
• During this time, you could make anecdotal
  records, or fill in checklists of student
  actions.

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Concept formation continued..

• Debrief
• There are different ways of debriefing.
• Mix and match the different forms of debriefs
  you use.
• large group encourage your students to use their
  conversation skills. . Remind them as needed.
• Their conversational skills are to listen
  carefully to what other speakers say. Then when
  they talk, they build on what others have said,
  and demonstrate this by using phrases such as
  "What I think is similar to what . . . said" , or
  "I disagree with what . . . said, because . . . "
  Encourage them also to speak tentatively with
  phrases such as "I thought" or "it seems".

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Concept formation continued

• Have each group of students explain their
  rationales for the classification systems.
• Draw attention to the different ways in which
  students classify if this is the purpose of the
  activity.
• Draw attention to the diverse observations -
  different groups will have observed different
  aspects of the same objects.
• If you expected your students to form a
  particular concept, and they haven't, think of
  why they wouldn't have. What background knowledge
  were they lacking, or what background knowledge
  contributed in a non-science way?Ê What other
  materials might have helped them to form the
  concept you wanted them to form?

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Finally

• Final Check
• Once the students have organized their materials,
  give them one or more extras and ask them to fit
  these in with the groups they have. This is a way
  for them to test their hypothetical categories.
  If they can fit the new materials in to the
  concepts they already have, then they should be
  content with the concepts they formed.

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And what else

• See the works of Bruner- page 173 how he
  influenced the social students curriculum- this
  was also discussed beginning Semester.
• Guided discovery is a convergent process.
• What does this mean?
• Leads to answers known to the teacher intended
  for students to discover
• Emphasizes concept formation-Mid-term part two
  has this emphasis- Although resources answers
  were provided.

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Other Examples of lessons

• Government
• How similar different is the state government
  from federal government?
• Lessons on Defining concepts
• Using analogies
• The Mayor is like the governor, except..
• The governor is like the president, except
• Using images
• here is a picture of a mountain, plateau- using
  it construct a mountain, plain, low lands etc-
  done in class.
• How are mountains and plain different?
• Here is a physical map- what do physical maps
  show? List examples.
• Here is a political map- what do political maps
  show?
• Using higher level thinking (Blooms) to help
  students define tell similarities differences

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More examples of lessons

• Using maps continued Examples- What are examples
  of mountains from each continent, state etc.?
  What are examples of deserts ? Then develop a
  lesson on each.
• Example Lesson Cities
• Look at the map- what are examples of cities?
• What is a city?
• Name three cities in Wyoming.
• What are the characteristics of a city?
• How is a city like and different from your
  neighborhood (application)
• How is the city like and different from the state
  (analysis application)
• Some people like to live in the city. Others like
  to live in the rural areas. What is rural areas?
  How is life different between cities and rural
  areas? What is your preference why?

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Using a series of activities to help understand
concept

• field trips
• role play
• Simulations
• Surveys
• crafts
• skits or plays mock trials
• Debates
• map making-
• Discussions-
• making time lines
•  making murals
• Listing, grouping labeling
• Which of these have we practiced in class?