Overview
In this standard, the teacher demonstrates knowledge of the underlying principles of how students develop and learn and creates an environment that supports the learning of all students. The teacher establishes a learner-centered culture that allows all students to be successful while respecting their differences in learning styles, as well as socio-economic, cultural and developmental characteristics. The learning environment is characterized by effective classroom procedures, appropriate use of technology and efficient management of behaviors and physical space. Students are encouraged to collaborate and to assume responsibility for their positive interaction in the learning environment.
Relevant Description
Learning Objectives:
1. illustrate appropriate facets of a
pilgrim's life
2. identify and reproduce correct
letter formations and word
locations in a sentence
3. exemplify appropriate behaviors
asked of them in a given task
4. identify parts of a pilgrim in an
imageand reproduce them
In this lesson, students worked in collaborative groups in order to produce a book entitled "If I Were a Pilgrim..." that features two individual pages for each student. The first page is an image of a man and a woman pilgrim, and the second page is a writing page that features a completion of the sentence "If I were a pilgrim..." for each student and a drawing that illustrates each sentence.
Reflective Analysis
A strategy that I used to establish a learner-centered classroom is collaborative groups. According to the Meaningful Learning reading, inquiry-based/project-based learning “is based on the premise that children learn deeply when they are asked to design and create an artifact that requires understanding and application of knowledge. (Barron & Darling-Hammond, 2008) The students had to work together to obtain and fit each piece of the pilgrims together--without talking or getting out of their seats. The students used their nonverbal communication skills to help the rest of their group achieve one goal. Each student had a piece of the pilgrims to give to the rest of their group; each student had to contribute to the task for everyone to succeed.
Struggling Student Reaction to Strategy:
One student who tends to struggle with every day work really excelled with this activity. He was excited about working as a team, and he thoroughly enjoyed contributing to the task by doing his part and helping others. He is definitely a kinesthetic learner, so completing a task that gave little direction
but included actually manipulating pieces was really a great way for him to learn.
Plans for Improvement:
If I were to do this lesson again, I would like to develop some sort of signal or sign for students to thank those who are helping them and a signal or sign for students to praise each other. This would help created a more learner-centered environment because it would encourage student respect and rapport, as well as effective group collaboration.
"Research on inquiry-based learning has identified the risks and consequences when students lack prior experience in this approach or have insufficient support and modeling from teachers." (Barron & Darling-Hammond, 2008) I believe that the students just need more practice working in collaborative groups. For being five and six years old, they did remarkably well working together. I would have also been more clear on exactly where to begin, how to finish, and so on. I probably would have modeled my own sentence on the document camera. This would aid in creating a more smoothly functioning learning environment.
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