Session 4: Learners Constructing Meaning

At the heart of the curriculum cycle is the learner constructing meaning.

Summative Assessment Task and Criteria
You will be working in your multiple intelligences groups. Show understanding of and connections between the 5 Essential Elements.

What does an environment for constructivist learning look like?
During this session you will be thinking about an effective/not effective learning experience that you had. What contributed to the success/failure of the experience. On post-its list these and display on Promotes Learning/Hinders Learning posters.

Feedback from the group:

Promotes Learning:

• Clear instructions in a safe atmosphere that allowed for trial, error, success and discussion
• My teacher related to my personal situation and gave me a safe time and place to talk, showing empathy and support
• Having fun
• Writing - making a structure of the topic/issue
• Positive learning: an atmosphere where it is OK to be wrong
• Learning connected and applicable to my life - that is relevant and meaningful
• Discussions
• Using visual aids, for example in maths using pie charts, graphs, bar charts, using pictures and films, artefacts
• Using visual, kinesthetic and audio teaching methods
• Practical - creating a drama, role play
• Collaborative - sharing ideas and working in groups
• Time for reflection
• Time to conceptualise learning
• Connection between subjects
• Inspirational personality, inspirational tutor at university, the enthusiastic manner in which the subject matter was taught
• Hands on, trying and experiencing, learning by doing
• I learned English on a job. I worked in a shop and learned with the experience only, bu talking every day with clients. I never had any English lessons at school. Great way of learning
• Experiments and exploration
• Seeing examples
• Meeting like minded people - but also meeting people with the opposite views
• Learning to use a computer
• Field trips
• Being praised and feeling appreciated - positive encouragement, a sense of worth and price in one's own abilities/effort, a teacher pointing out my strengths
• Knowing what the expected learning outcome is
• Multiple intelligences and learning styles
• Talking

Hinders Learning:

• Unclear and confusing directions, no modelling
• Flourescent lights
• Reams of paper
• Stress, pre-expectations the teacher had of my skills and how I felt I couldn't meet them
• Low self-esteem, feeling scared and embarassed to answer incorrectly or not fit in, scary teachers, feeling humiliated for being wrong, a teacher who had awful breath and looked down girls' tops when you asked for help (you quickly learned to stop asking for help!)
• Language
• Everyone talking at once
• Being told/talked at, listening to the teacher and copying from the board, limited teaching methods
• Being forced to do what the teacher wanted (example I wanted to learn jazz, piano teacher wanted me to learn classical music)
• Exams
• Long sitting, listening, viewing sessions with no goal focus or without knowing the goal
• Boring lessons, cannot see the meaning of content, jumping from one concept to another, no relevance or connection
• Sounds and music
• Learning by rote
• Negative labelling
• Being rushed to finish difficult tasks, limited time

Connect/Extend/Challenge
This is a Visible Thinking routine for connecting new ideas to prior knowledge.

Use this Visible Thinking routine as you read Kathy Short's Inquiry, Curriculum and Standards.

Children's Literature that promotes International Mindedness

My Dad is Brilliant - Nick Butterworth

Private and Confidential - Marion Ripley

It's OK to be Different - Todd Parr

The Conquerors - David McKee

Whoever You Are - Mem Fox

Odd Velvet - Mary E. Whitcomb

Oi! Get off our Train - John Burningham

Cleversticks - Bernard Ashley

Ripeka's Carving - Jenny Hessell

My Place - Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlings

My Map Book - Sara Fanelli

Krong! - Garry Parsons

Home - Kate Petty

Testing Miss Malarkey - Judy Finchler

A Fine, Fine School - Sharon Creech

My Granny Went to Market - Stella Blackstone and Christopher Corr

Something Else - Kathryn Cave and Chris Riddell

If the World Were a Village - David J. Smith and Shelagh Armstrong

W is for World - Oxfam

The Lotus Seed - Sherry Garland

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge - Mem Fox

The Colour of Home - Mary Hoffman and Karin Littlewood