This week, I have come to see even more, the value of web
2.0 tools in my classroom as it relates to student engagement and the process
skills, the abilities and understanding of inquiry and the three key findings
listed below.
1. Students
come to the classroom with preconceptions about how the world works. If their
initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts
and information, or they may learn them for purposes of a test but revert to
their preconceptions outside the classroom.
2. To develop
competence in an area of inquiry, students must (a) have a deep foundation of
factual knowledge, (b) understand facts and ideas in the context of a
conceptual framework, and (c) organize knowledge in ways that facilitate
retrieval and application.
3. A
"metacognitive" approach to instruction can help students learn to
take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring
their progress in achieving them (pp. 1-2)
In order for students to learn they
must be engaged and make connections to their prior knowledge. I often tell my students to look in their
brain dictionaries for vocabulary that they can link with the new facts and
concepts that I’m teaching them. When I
introduce a new vocabulary word or skill, I simply write it on the board and
then ask students to make any connections they can with it. They turn and talk with their neighbor to
share their ideas. For example, I
introduced contractions this week.
Students came up with similar sounding words such as construction and
subtraction. They didn’t pull out the
meaning of contract but they are second graders so I wasn’t looking for that, I
just wanted to get them to start a connection so we had something to build
on. Construction worked because we are
constructing a new word and subtraction worked because we are subtracting
letters in order to make the new word.
Now students had something to connect with and at least a temporary place
in their brain dictionaries to store the new word. I used a video from Grammar Jammar to build
their prior knowledge and connect contraction with the concept that they were
probably already familiar with or had seen in books. The video plays a song and characters dance
and the examples of contractions appear and move around on the screen as they
go from being two words into a contraction.
The word apostrophe is introduced here as well. Students were able to connect apostrophe with
a comma but that an apostrophe is on sky line and the comma is on the grass
line. I could see that students were
engaged during this lesson because they were active. During the video they were trying to sing
along and calling out connections. “I’ve
seen that word before!” “Hey, that looks
like a comma! We learned about comma’s
last week.” After the video, I asked students again to turn and talk and share
their new ideas with their partner. Now
light bulbs were going off. They had all
seen contractions before they just didn’t know what they were called or the
right way to build them. The activity
that I assigned the students was to copy four examples from the board: could
not, do not, does not and can not and turn them into contractions on their Kidblog. Here is their finished blog example.
From here I could see where the
students were at with building contractions using 'not'. They also went in and commented on each
other’s blogs to help teach each other the rule of dropping the o. In the next lesson I showed students another video
from Grammar Jammar that explained how to make contractions with other endings
such as is and have. We built these
types of contractions together and students identified the rules. In the third lesson, we revisited the video
and sang along so students could have a jingle to help them remember the rules
when building contractions. I then had
them write two words on a sticky note and the matching contraction on another
sticky note. I collected them and ruled
out any misconceptions. One student
overgeneralized the rule and wrote Barcavage is and Barcavage’s so I was able to
take a quick teachable moment to get the student back on track. I handed out the sticky notes and did a mix
freeze. The students paired up and went around
the circle reading the two words and then the matching contraction. Students then went back to their blogs and
wrote what they learned about contractions.
At the end, I had a few of them share what they wrote on the Smartboard
and the class gave them feedback on their writing and their ideas so the
student could edit and revise. Students
now have the word contraction linked in their brain dictionaries in several
places. They already had examples of
contractions filed away now they have the word connected to them and the rules
are linked in with the appropriate contraction.
I always tell my students in order to learn new vocabulary you have to
speak it, read it and write it over and over and over again. Next week, I am going to have students use
what they know now to understand irregularities in contractions such as making will
not into won’t. I would like them to
build a presentation at the end of the week to apply their understanding. Does anyone have suggestions for what they
could use? I was thinking maybe the
Popplet app where they could do a word splash of contractions or maybe ShowMe.
As I continue to build upon my
understanding of using inquiry based learning in my classroom I will utilize technology
with student engagement in mind. From this
week’s readings and discussions, I feel more validated for the time and energy
I’ve put in to making technology accessible and useable for my students. They are learning new ways to communicate and
how to be responsible in an online community.
I am excited to see how all this connects and encourages students to
take ownership of their learning while mastering new concepts and building
lifelong process skills.
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