Social+Constructivist+Learning

The Social Constructivist Theory The Social Constructivist theory is based on students actively engaging in the learning rather than information being transferred by the teacher to the student (A Miles and K Browne 2008). After much discussion, we have come up with five main focus points of social constructivism and based our major assignment around these. //Students must be actively engaged. // While completing each tasks created on our wiki, students are actively participating in many activities when learning about different weather concepts. There is a variety of active learning experiences throughout our wiki, which involve students researching on computers and using digital cameras to take photos of the sky when determine the chances of rain. Students are also asked to complete science experiments which involve hands on learning and investigations. //Students must take part in problem solving. // Student’s need many opportunities to problem solve and throughout our wiki children are able to investigate different weather concepts and experiment with and create a variety of weather measuring tools. When using these tools students must demonstrate problem solving skills to ensure that they have created an appropriate measuring tool. Almost all tasks are completed in groups which allows students to problem solve collaboratively. //Tasks must be meaningful to students // Students must be able to relate to tasks in order for them to be meaningful. Students are asked to investigate the weather around them and provide information to the rest of the class. Students must determine how the weather affects them and how they have adapted to different weather conditions. Students also get the opportunity to use materials that are motivating such as the interactive whiteboard, digital cameras, computers as well as take part in engaging science experiments. //Tasks must be completed through a collaborative approach // As stated before almost all tasks are completed in groups, each students must actively participate in group discussions, problems solving, investigations and when drawing conclusions. It is through collaboration that students learn how to share their ideas, listen to others, share materials, become part of a team and in turn experience a sense of responsibility. It is our belief that students must be given opportunities to practice working collaboratively and should not be expected to possess these skills without training and ample practice. //Teaching and learning focuses on the process rather than the final product // Students are asked to create a weather report as their major project, however students are given multiple investigation based tasks to complete throughout the term, to deepen their understanding and to provide them with information to put in their reports. The teaching and learning throughout this unit of work is focussed on the process of how the students predict, investigate and record weather patterns as opposed to the weather report they produce at the end of the term. The report is used as a tool that allows students to present the information they have learned about the topic and collate it together in an organised fashion.

Reference:

Gordon, A., Browne, K. (2008). //Beginnings and Beyond:// FOUNDATIONS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION (7TH ed.). New York: Thomson