Learning Never Stops

"The power of question is the basis of all human progress." - Indira Gandhi. During an IB workshop I was conducting a few months ago, I remember a teacher heaving a huge sigh of relief when she learnt that it was okay for her students to struggle with generating questions. I was a little taken aback to see her so stressed. Though young children are naturally curious, they usually struggle to articulate their queries in a formal setting. While engaged in play, as they create things with loose parts for instance, most of their questions are in their minds. If they fail at something, you can see their questions in their expressions and movement of their hands as they try and figure out what to do next. Lately I have seen a lot of posts on "X" and some educational platforms where the focus is on surface and deep questions. This is usually accompanied by a visual of a scuba diver trying to reach the depths of the ocean. So this time, instead of a wonder wall for my unit

  Concepts-In Use www.ibo.org In this post, one more strategy takes center stage when it comes to designing lessons that aid conceptual understanding in our students: Concept-In-Use. This strategy should be used once several concepts have been covered in class.  A great way to know whether your students are internalizing the concepts is to ask them to explain the connections between two concepts. For example:  In Math Ask them to convert a fraction to a percentage.  Or a percentage to a decimal.  Can they clearly explain the connection?  Can they use drawings to support their explanation? Can they articulate the difference between a prism and a pyramid.  How are they same?  How are they different? How can you represent data visually?  Bar graphs, pictographs, line charts are all concepts. As a designer of conceptual lessons, a teacher needs to be keenly aware of the connections between concepts.  For instance, is the Grade 3 teacher aware that multiplication (times tables) and skip cou

  Strategy : Internalization What is internalization and how does it look in the classroom? "Transforming an individual physical or material activity into other mental and conceptual forms of that same external activity, to acquire new understandings." (ibo.org) The first time I came across this explanation, I struggled to understand it.  However, as I continued to read more about this strategy, I had a lot of 'aha' moments which helped consolidate my understanding of a few things. The research behind this strategy (Gasperin,1989) addressed the following too: How "internalization" is but an extension of Vygotsky's Social Constructivist theory The reasoning behind a spiral curriculum and why it is so effective How to help students become self-regulated learners For those of you interested in the research,  refer to the sources cited below. So coming back to the explanation of internalization... Learning occurs at three levels: Material level Verbal level

How can I begin designing a Concept-driven lesson? I haven't yet completed sharing thoughts and ideas about some of the strategies in my Concept-driven Learning series. Some of you have messaged me about planning ideas. I'm sharing what I created for my assignment during the upskilling course on concept-driven learning for IBEN members. It is a template that helps me use the strategies. 3 pages Hope this helps! hashtag Planning Template

  Strategy 4 : Near and Far Transfer Before we move on to the next strategy on designing concept-based lessons, please find links to the previous blog posts in case you want to read more about other strategies. Part 1: Classification Part 2: Representation Part 3: Generalization How is 'transfer' defined?  When learning in one context enhances  a related performance in another context. (Perkins and Salomon, 1992) The ability to extend what has been learned in one context to new contexts (Brandsford, Brown, Cocking, 1999)  The process of using knowledge or skills acquired in one context in a new or varied context. (Alexander and Murphy, 1992)   Now let us break it down to - Near Transfer - transfer between very similar but not identical contexts. Far Transfer -transfer between contexts that, on appearance, seem remote and alien to one another. Applying learning to situations that are quite dissimilar to the original learning. The strategy of near transfers may be fairly com

This post is the third of our blog post series on how to design lessons for conceptual understanding. Part 1 here Part 2 here Strategy 3 : Generalizations You may have come across Lynn Erickson's diagram on the structure of knowledge. In my IB workshop's I always like to present the avocado model alongside this diagram when I am talking about facts. The intention of inquiry-based teaching and conceptually-driven understanding (or Concept-based inquiry- whatever terminology suits your fancy)  is to enable students to make generalizations. In other words, can they transfer their learning to a new context because they have understood what they learnt.  In order to make generalizations, we need to first plan lessons that help students acquire facts/topics that are interesting  and worth knowing. Bringing in local and global issues that are relevant to the topic help students as they begin to compare the topics and see emerging patterns. Remember, facts and concepts have a synergist

  Strategy 2 - Representation     Source: ibo.org In this post, I will flesh out yet another research based strategy - Representation.   Check out my first post of this series here:   Part 1 Think of a concept, an idea. How many different ways can you represent it? First of all, before you can expect your students to show their understanding in different ways, don't forget to model it. For example, as you teach students the concept of subtraction, show them a variety of ways to get to the answer. Math Let us take 600 - 148 for instance. One way to solve this would be: Another representation would be to draw using place value blocks. And then of course, there is the basic algorithm which is great for students who have a good conceptual understanding of the concept of  "subtraction." It is a quick and efficient method to get to the answer.     600 -  148     ______ I understand the importance many teachers place on this last method, yet I have found, as I confer with my stu