Making content relevant
In our fact-test school culture we see boredom in many of our students. The reason behind this is that we rarely get beyond the facts. Additionally, we have taken all of the control for learning away, focusing on covering the jam packed curriculum in a short period of time.
How can teachers make their content more relevant to their students? It’s not an easy task.
“The inquiring teacher mediates the classroom environment in accordance with both the primary concept she has chosen for the class inquiry and her growing understanding of student’s emerging interests and cognitive abilities within the concept.”
There is a lot in this statement from In Search of Understanding: The Case for the Constructivist Classroom. The two main components are questioning and being sensitive to your students prior knowledge and interests. By developing questions and problems that promote understanding of larger concepts, a teacher can orchestrate the classroom environment to be one of inquiry and questioning from the students themselves. In order to develop these all-important questions, the teacher has to have an understanding of her students. She has to know what knowledge they already have that they can use to problem solve. When you tap into previously learned knowledge, the learning becomes relevant. Sometime that prior knowledge can involve technology.
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