TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGIES FOR THINKING CLASSROOM

In the last class Mina proposed us to create a teaching sequence introducing some of the strategies that can be used in classroom. There are lot of strategies that can be useful in order to make a good and effective class. If we use some strategies in class, we will help children to develop their thinking, to obtain better results, to build their knowledge, to teach them how to organize their work, etc. Some examples of those strategies to work with are: anticipation, building knowledge, consolidation, brainstorming, paired reading and summarizing, etc.

My group was composed by: Pablo, Isabel, Laura, Sara Sánchez and Raúl. We decided to work with brainstorming strategy and we made a science teaching sequence. This strategy consists in generating many ideas about a topic so first students have to look for in their previous knowledge, open their minds and select what ideas are correct and what are not. This strategy can be done by individuals, groups or even the whole class; we work with the three of them. In our group we decided to talk about the topic of ‘energy expenditure’ so we first explained students what a brainstorming is and then we started with the activities. In the first activity children had to discuss with the teacher in which things they save energy, meanwhile the teacher wrote all their answers on the blackboard. In the second activity we divided the class in three groups and we gave one topic to each group (light, paper and water). Each one had to write on a paper one idea to save something related with the topic they had. They had to share in common their ideas of the same group in order not to put the same idea in two papers. Finally in the last activity they had to play a game called ‘Taboo’. Each member of the groups had to explain the idea he or she had written to the rest of the people from the other groups. The difficulty was that they can’t use the words they had written and neither could use mime. At the end of the lesson we asked children what they had learned, why was it important, what they were going to do now that they have a better knowledge, etc. With all these activities all the students have more specific ideas to save water, paper and light and they work brainstorming strategy.

In order to obtain an active learning there should be three phases on each lesson. The first phase is anticipation in which students are asked to answer questions related with the topic they are going to study. With this we can know their previous knowledge and focus their attention on the topic we want to work with. The second phase is building knowledge in which students have to answer their previous questions, propose new ones and also answer them, find out new knowledge and make sense of their thinking. This phase serves to revise what children are learning, identify the main points of the topic and let students to make their personal connections between all the knowledge and information they have. The last phase is consolidation in which teachers want students to reflect on what they have learned, ask what it means to them, the sense of them and what changes have occurred on their process of thinking and learning. The sense of this phase is to summarize the main ideas, make them more specific, share opinions, make personal responses and ask additional questions in order to expand knowledge.

I think these three phases are very important in lessons because without one of them the whole process of learning is not finished so the results are not optimal. At school and high school I have no used to work through the three phases but at university I do. I have realized that I learned more if I start from my previous knowledge, I improve it and learn new one and at the end I summarize what I have learned. Almost all my university teachers told us to analyze our process of learning in blogs, wikis, activities… and this is very useful. 

Curriculum ideologies

There are four different curriculum ideologies to solve in a different way practical problems. So this is how to plan instruction and classes. The four ideologies are:

- The Scholar Academic Ideology

- The Social Efficiency Ideology

- The Learner Centered Ideology

- The Social Reconstruction Ideology

• The Scholar Academic Ideology:

The most important aspects of this ideology are the academic disciplines as a way of teaching for the life, it is very important that children study all the subjects and that they develop their intellect. In the curriculum are established all the subjects with the knowledge children should have. The most important role of education is to preserve all the academic disciplines in order they continue existing in the future so they have to be transmitted to all the population.

People who defend this ideology care about curriculum content more than students’ learning. The role of teachers is to transmit all the disciplines to the children and they finally have to learn all (it doesn’t matter if they don’t understand at all something). In order to see if children have learned and who are the bests, teachers make tests about all the curriculum disciplines.

This is not a correct ideology because they don’t specify why they introduce all those academic disciplines, so they don’t really know what the objective of learning is or for what children are learning. Teachers only transmit their knowledge to students and they learn without thinking what they are learning.

• The Social Efficiency Ideology:

In this ideology the most important idea is to relate the curriculum with what society want. People who defend this ideology want to update the traditional school and all the contents. Educators have to teach students good techniques in order they can make what they are told to do. In schools children should learn how to behave and face the problems of the real life, and also each one have to learn his or her society role. In general this ideology understands the education as a training in which students learn his role in the society in order to be efficient citizens. Education is at the service of society so all the objectives are related with the interests of that society. Students develop into adulthood with teachers’ and educational media’s help. Children who succeed in evaluation are appreciated by the society and those who don’t succeed have to repeat and improve themselves.

This ideology doesn’t work well because it is focused only in society. It doesn’t care about children learning because they only want to transform them into good members of the society.

• The Learner Centered Ideology:

It doesn’t have any relation with the traditional school, this ideology is based on children and their interests. People who defend this ideology assume that children can be responsible of their own development and they decide what they want to learn, educators only guide and help them. Children enjoy classes because they work with interest objects for them and they can be novels and innovative. Children grow through their experiences and different activities. The way of thinking of each child depends on the development stage they are and they pass to the following one by themselves, educators shouldn’t force them to mature. In this ideology is present constructivism and socio-constructivism since children’s development depend on the environment and the people around them. They rarely make tests because each child evolves in a different way, so they evaluate child interests and development individually.

This ideology is good because it focuses on individual children so all of them can develop in the best way as possible.

• The Social Reconstruction Ideology:

This ideology thinks that when children born are not good or bad, they are members of the future society. In this ideology is present socio-constructivist method based on previous knowledge and new experiences. The curriculum should be related with students’ context and with the culture. The learning is a social process not individual so it takes place on schools (through debates, problems analysis, discussions, etc) and outside them. Educators’ role is to reconstruct children and the society in general, they have to understand society problems and be able to analyze and solve them. Knowledge is inside individuals and with it people can be able to improve society. They make subjective evaluations to control students but not to evaluate their knowledge, self-evaluation is also very important.

This ideology let freedom to students develop so it is an interesting ideology and it is also focused on children who are the protagonists of learning process.

Curriculum Ideologies

Focused on

The Scholar Academic Ideology	Academic disciplines
The Social Efficiency Ideology	Society interests
The Learner Centered Ideology	Individual children
The Social Reconstruction Ideology	Reconstruct children