(This article was sent
in some time ago. If anyone knows who the author is could they please let us
know)
They
didn't learn anything
I began by introducing my grade 1 & 2
class to our new focus question How does the weather affect living things? Students were enthusiastic about this and
immediately began to talk about their experiences with different types of
weather. We talked about the rain, the
sun and then we moved onto storms. As can probably be expected many of the
students were scared of thunder and lightning and it was their comments about
this that started me thinking about their understandings.
I hate the thunder, It's God being
angry, Yeah he's stamping his feet, Thunder happens when the clouds move, the
lightning can be very noisy.'
It became evident that their understandings
of electrical storms stemmed from their experiences and their fears. I enjoyed
listening to the way they made sense of their world so I probed the students
further. I asked them where they thought
the wind came from.
'The trees' the clouds moving' God blowing
air.'
I found their responses fascinating. The students spoke with such confidence, they
appeared to be well thought out statements, which reflected their current
knowledge and understandings about weather.
I continued.
What about rain?
I had always valued students' prior
knowledge and provided opportunities to share their thoughts, yet this was
different. I
felt like the students were
formulating their ideas during the discussion. Maybe they hadn't ever
reached a
conclusion and with this opportunity and the support of the other students'
ideas, they had the confidence to develop and share their own.
I don't think I have ever felt so
enthusiastic about exploring a focus question.
There were so many areas we could explore. Over the next few weeks we looked at the
water cycle, we constructed and used wind gauges, we studied different cloud
types, we kept track of the daily weather, we read about the causes of thunder
and lightening and discussed the many accompanying diagrams and pictures. We then related each topic to day to day life
to see the impact weather has on our lives.
We had been really busy.
Student comments and actions were very
positive over the course of the unit.
Students produced terrific pieces of work that I felt reflected a growth
in understanding in some of the concepts I had been attempting to teach. Towards the end of the unit I wanted to find
out how much the students had learned so I invited each student to have a
one-on-one conference where we discussed different aspects of the content. I decided to re-visit the questions I had
used at the beginning of the unit as I felt that the differences in their
responses would help me to see what they had learned.
After I had completed all of the
conferences I felt really disappointed.
To my dismay they still thought God's
emotions determined the type of weather, the trees still caused the wind and
lightning made just as much noise as thunder.
They had learned little if nothing of the content I had worked so hard
to teach. I had planned experiences that
I knew were successful, students were on-task nearly all of the time, yet their
ideas had changed very little. Maybe at
this point student fears and prior experiences overpowered what I thought would
be more logical explanations. Maybe some
of the concepts were just too difficult so they maintained their current understandings
that are comfortable and logical to them.
Although harder to stomach maybe it was my teaching.
It was this experience that taught me a
very valuable lesson in teaching. I had
been told many times before that just because you teach students something doesn't mean they have learned it. I
don't think I really understood this until now.
Or
did they?
Years later I find
myself re-visiting these events in my classroom. There seems to be so much more to my story
than I had first thought. I certainly
remember feeling extremely disappointed when my students expressed the same
thoughts and ideas at the end of the unit on weather as they did in the
beginning. Looking back on a class
discussion after the conferences I am convinced that learning is not just tied
to the content or the concepts that are taught.
For the last few weeks we've been looking
at weather, focusing on How does the weather affect living things? Does anyone
have any new thoughts about our focus question?
What about you Ellie?
Umm (A few seconds silence) could I have
some more time to think?
Sure Ellie, we'll come back to you later.
What about you Tom?
I want to know how birds fly in storms.
How might you find out more about that
Tom?
I might need a book from the library.
That would be an appropriate place to
start. Ellie how are you going with your
thinking?
You all have your own tasks to do. What
might help you with your work today Sarah?
It's a bit high, it's hard to read.
Ok let's get to work. If anyone wants to remain on the floor for
further discussion about their work, then stay. If you plan to start work think
about the types of resources you need to begin and decide where is the best
place to sit. I'll be working on the
displays if anybody needs me.
(Sometime later.) What decisions did you
make in your work Broddy?
I drew a labelled diagram of my wind gauge
but I needed to write some more information so I wrote some facts on it like a
fact file.
These students can not only frame
questions, which reflect their learning needs but they understand how to
explore them. They can effectively
access the resources and materials in the classroom while evaluating their
effectiveness. At this stage these
students were capable of deciding which procedures to use to show what new
learning had taken place and could articulate all of the decisions they had
made.
Although I realise many students hadn't
learned much about difficult concepts like; how water changes to vapour during
the water cycle, or how ice and water particles rub together to cause an
electrical charge or even how to measure wind speed on the Beaufort scale. They
had shared and used a language, which allowed them to discuss and explore
different aspects of weather.
Maybe I wasn't able to articulate it at the
time but I had learned more than just you can't force students to learn or that
students construct meaning from their experiences, I also learnt that there are
many aspects to learning. These students
were developing and using strategies that reflected the knowledge they had of
their own learning. They were showing me
they had the power to effect what and how they learn.
So what started out as an evaluation of my
teaching turned into a lesson about learning.