Friday, September 30, 2016

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 10/01/2016

  • This article offers six ways to think about student engagement and several ideas for how to increase it.

    tags: engagement collaboration differentiation teaching strategies student engagement pbl

    • In aiming for full engagement, it is essential that students perceive activities as being meaningful. Research has shown that if students do not consider a learning activity worthy of their time and effort, they might not engage in a satisfactory way, or may even disengage entirely in response (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004).
    • highlighting the value of an assigned activity in personally relevant ways.
      • Researchers have found that effectively performing an activity can positively impact subsequent engagement (Schunk & Mullen, 2012). To strengthen students' sense of competence in learning activities, the assigned activities could:

          
        • Be only slightly beyond students' current levels of proficiency
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        • Make students demonstrate understanding throughout the activity
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        • Show peer coping models (i.e. students who struggle but eventually succeed at the activity) and peer mastery models (i.e. students who try and succeed at the activity)
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        • Include feedback that helps students to make progress
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      • When teachers relinquish control (without losing power) to the students, rather than promoting compliance with directives and commands, student engagement levels are likely to increase as a result (Reeve, Jang, Carrell, Jeon, & Barch, 2004). Autonomy support can be implemented by:

          
        • Welcoming students' opinions and ideas into the flow of the activity
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        • Using informational, non-controlling language with students
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        • Giving students the time they need to understand and absorb an activity by themselves
    • When students work effectively with others, their engagement may be amplified as a result (Wentzel, 2009), mostly due to experiencing a sense of connection to others during the activities (Deci & Ryan, 2000).
    • Teacher modeling is one effective method (i.e. the teacher shows how collaboration is done), while avoiding homogeneous groups and grouping by ability, fostering individual accountability by assigning different roles, and evaluating both the student and the group performance also support collaborative learning.
      • High-quality teacher-student relationships are another critical factor in determining student engagement, especially in the case of difficult students and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (Fredricks, 2014). When students form close and caring relationships with their teachers, they are fulfilling their developmental need for a connection with others and a sense of belonging in society (Scales, 1991). Teacher-student relationships can be facilitated by:

          
        • Caring about students' social and emotional needs
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        • Displaying positive attitudes and enthusiasm
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        • Increasing one-on-one time with students
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        • Treating students fairly
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        • Avoiding deception or promise-breaking
    • When students pursue an activity because they want to learn and understand (i.e. mastery orientations), rather than merely obtain a good grade, look smart, please their parents, or outperform peers (i.e. performance orientations), their engagement is more likely to be full and thorough (Anderman & Patrick, 2012).
  • This article explains how children's theory formation is central to how they understand scientific concepts. It also explains how teachers might build on children's current theories and how teaching can focus students on new areas of exploration so that they can build new theories.

    tags: science

    • In school, teachers can select a range of experiences that provide children with new data and encourage them to challenge their existing ideas and build new ones. School also provides the opportunity for children to learn how to record what they are  http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf99148/ch_4.htm5doing in many different ways, how to communicate and share with others, and also how to develop models for understanding as they get older.
    • Young children are often more linear in their thinking about causality than adults are. It's hard for them to juggle too many factors at the same time. They are not terribly upset, in the primary years, if theories contradict one another. They can have one theory over here and another one over there, and that's okay, for the moment. They haven't quite taken hold of the notion that you can't have contradictions. It doesn't necessarily mean that their thinking is illogical or irrational. It may simply mean that they do not need consistency or see the connections. Nor do young children tend to value parsimony, or elegance and  http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf99148/ch_4.htm3simplicity of explanation. They may have very complicated explanations of how and why something happens. They may not care whether it is as elegant or simple as it could be. Simplicity is a more adult constraint on theory formation, not necessarily one of young children.
    • http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf99148/ch_4.htm1The Power of Children's Thinkingby Karen WorthThe earth is flat. Fluttering leaves make the wind. The moon follows you as you walk. Based on how they understand everyday sensations and experiences, even young children create theories to explain the world around them. As this essay points out, guiding children to discover a more scientific view of the world means helping them learn through those same sensations and experiences-something that inquiry does particularly well.Two grandparents were out walking with their young grandchildren. They came to a rabbit hutch with three rabbits inside, an adult male and female, and what seemed to be a baby. As the children watched, a leaf fell on top of the cage. The female rabbit reached up, pulled the leaf into the cage, and dropped it on the ground. At that moment, one of the other rabbits started to eat it. Four-year-old Tommy, the littlest child, was intrigued. He picked up some leaves, put them on top of the cage, and watched the rabbit pull them inside. When they got home the grandmother asked, "Well, what did you think of those rabbits? What do you think was going on in that cage?" Tommy said, "The mommy rabbit taught us something when she pulled those leaves down. The mommy rabbit was really a teacher and you and grandfather and the other rabbits, we were all the students." There are many stories in which children reveal their attempts to make sense of the world. They are important, not because they are cute, but because they tell us something about the power of children's thinking. Young children can and do inquire, and it is important not to underestimate the power of this inquiry. They do so in different ways, depending on developmental level, prior experience, and context. From what we know from cognitive research, the context has to be concrete; the phenomena and objects must be ones children can explore with their senses. But at all ages, children do observe and investigate, collect data, think, reason, and draw conclusions.The theories children build, whether they are right or wrong, are not capricious. They are often logical and ratio
    • The theories children build, whether they are right or wrong, are not capricious. They are often logical and rational, and firmly based in evidence and experience. The experience may not be deep and broad enough, the thinking capability may not be enough to formulate what we call a scientific theory, but the process by which the children form these ideas is very scientific indeed. Some call these early ideas children form misconceptions; others label them naive conceptions, or alternative conceptions. They are simply the children's conceptions and do not deserve the negative connotations associated with these terms.
    • The immediate context is all that they have, tightly linked to personal experience. But the ideas that they develop are, in the right context, transferable across experiences
    • Young
    • children are often more linear in their thinking about causality than adults are. It's hard for them to juggle too many factors at the same time. They are not terribly upset, in the primary years, if theories contradict one another. They can have one theory over here and another one over there, and that's okay, for the moment. They haven't quite taken hold of the notion that you can't have contradictions. It doesn't necessarily mean that their thinking is illogical or irrational. It may simply mean that they do not need consistency or see the connections. Nor do young children tend to value parsimony, or elegance and
    • simplicity of explanation. They may have very complicated explanations of how and why something happens. They may not care whether it is as elegant or simple as it could be. Simplicity is a more adult constraint on theory formation, not necessarily one of young children.
    • Another characteristic of children's thinking is tenacity. Children do not want to give up the concepts and theories they work so hard to make. They take their experiences and struggle to come up with understandings that work in their daily lives. They are not about to drop their ideas just because someone says so, or because an event disproves what they have come to believe. As anyone familiar with the history of science can attest, even adults have trouble changing theories that are well grounded in experience. If a child's theory works, if it has been productive and the child has worked hard to build that theory, she will not give it up unless she has a lot of new experiences that provide reasons to do so.
    • Fundamental to this kind of teaching and learning is the willingness to work with children "where they are," and to understand with what they are struggling.
    • Fundamental to this kind of teaching and learning is the willingness to work with children "where they are," and to understand with what they are struggling.
    • By offering children open-ended experiences and discussion, and by carefully observing and listening, we can come closer to knowing not only what their conceptions are, but the source of their struggle. If we don't, they may draw a picture of a round world, but not believe or understand what that really means.
    • As children explore phenomena and materials, they focus on what is immediately important to them, not necessarily on what is important from a scientific point of view. Structured programs in a school environment make the phenomena and objects somewhat less messy and encourage students to look more closely at particular elements of what is going on. Teachers also guide children's inquiry to help them be more orderly and systematic than they might be on their own, and so they can draw on other resources such as books, people, media, and technology.
    • In school, teachers can select a range of experiences that provide children with new data and encourage them to challenge their existing ideas and build new ones. School also provides the opportunity for children to learn how to record what they are
    • To support children's learning in science, teachers must be willing to try to understand the ideas and formulations children have made and are making and to guide their instruction accordingly. This means the teacher accepts andsupports a wide variety of views and encourages real dialogue and debate among the children. This also means creating a rich physical and social learning environment in which new questions, explorations, and investigations can arise, and in which every step is not dictated.
    • http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf99148/ch_4.htm5doing in many different ways, how to communicate and share with others, and also how to develop models for understanding as they get older.
    • In such an environment, the teacher allows the children to gather data and approach ideas from multiple contexts. He or she allows the children time for trials, repetition, and mistakes, and creates a balance between adult guidance and time for children to be guided by their own questions, predictions, and explorations.
    • If children are struggling with an idea, they need time to come to a physical understanding of it before they can really use it in their world. If they do not have these opportunities, they may learn the words and information they need for school. They may get all the answers right on a test. And they may also create another kind of understanding on their own. They may come to believe that there is something called "science," in which they are told what to see, what to know, and what to think, and that it is rather unrelated to the world they experience outside of school.
    • They also may come to the conclusion that there is a whole realm of knowledge that they themselves cannot understand, and that they must simply take, unquestioned and not understood, the facts as given from an adult or a textbook.
  • These plastic pieces can be used to connect straws together to build a variety of structures.

    tags: maker maker tools straws strawbees STEAM stem

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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