Week 5

Learning As Constructing Presentation

The Learning As Constructing Group consisted of Michael Ziarno, Robert Strazhnik, and Abdul Farah. Constructivists include Vygotsky, Piaget, Dewey, and Bruner. Constructivism engages students by enabling them to build on their personal schema and reflect on the connections that they make. This was a fundamental theory used in the Ontario Ministry of Education’s Grades 1-8, Language [revised] (Ontario, 2006, p39), document for the Grade 1 Reading Expectation 1.6 Extending Understanding. The child is to connect stories they read to their own lives (text-to-self), to other stories they remember (text-to-text), and to the communities they live in (text-to-world).

Reflection

I often taught this expectation after we had completed Social Studies units on the students’ families and communities. This would permit adequate time to get to know the students so that I could help them construct knowledge from what they already knew. I was able to help the children to understand how the context of the fiction or non-fiction works read in class related to their history and daily lives. Personal timelines made at school, and cultural artefacts portrayed in photographs emailed from home, were important to them. These items displayed around the room, meant that students could build on their wakening understanding of their background. It personalized the room so that items they saw each day reflected not only themselves, but their families, religions and cultures as well. Parents and children alike enjoyed and appreciated when the classroom was used as an inclusive environment to blend their home and school lives. Personally, I loved it when parents would photograph the room to send to relatives in different lands.

Learning As Experience Presentation

The Learning as Experience Group consisted of Jamie Adjetey-Nelson, Sownthy Senthilchelvan, Srikanth Kasarla, JC Alicaway, and Audrey Dublin. Philosophers who follow this way of learning include Kolb, Dewey, and Schon. This theory proved to be relatable to the group because there are twenty-seven stickies of activities where experience has created proficiency. There is a wide range of experiential learning and there were others mentioned while the Group was discussing the slide.

Reflection

         I often find that I learn better by experience. Whether experimenting, making, researching, or writing, the hands-on/minds-on component rather than passivity creates a better learning environment. We also know that the pedagogy of teaching children and the andragogy of teaching adults is different. That’s where the reflection piece of this Artefact collection is critical. I simply would not have learned much about these theories if I was just watching the presentations. By reflecting, I am really thinking about what each means and the implications for knowing, learning, and understanding, and how that connects to knowledge and teaching.